Imposture: Diagnosis and Prognosis

I have a confession. I often do not feel I belong where I am. My constant nagging thoughts are "what the hell makes you think you can understand molecular biology when all you know is farming, and you don't even know that very well", "you are only here because you have been pushed through by people who like you as a person or because it would advance their career" and "you had a hard enough time getting through kindergarten to grade four, what makes you think you can get through your second graduate degree!" I live every day thinking someone (or even worse a collective group) is finally going to realize that I don't have the mental capacity to pursue my chosen career and the only reason I have gotten as far as I have is by work ethic alone. What if all those 'it's attitude not aptitude' pep talks I have given myself all along are a lie. When I can put the grand scheme into perspective and I know if I could just get over this mental game I could move on and be perfectly productive even in the most competitive fields. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to the mental games associated with success in academia.

Because of these notion, a peer diagnosed me with 'imposture syndrome' the other day.

Well, yesterday I believe my imposturism was 'discovered'. I hate being put on the spot, thus oral exams are my biggest fear. To make a long story short, the mid-term oral exam in the hardest class I have ever taken started out with me being 30 minutes late due to an error in my daytimer (my stupid mistake). From there it went all down hill ... I couldn't even explain the overall process of meiosis (need I remind you that I am a doctorate candidate in genetics!), I said "I hate my brain sometimes" right in the middle of the exam and I had tears welling in my eyes part way through. Was the exam fair? Of course it was. So my conclusion is that I have finally been discovered as an imposture.