Ask me anything: Margaret Gardel – ‘I wish I could tell myself 20 years ago that it’s okay to feel like an impostor’ – Physics World

Ask me anything: Margaret Gardel – ‘I wish I could tell myself 20 years ago that it’s okay to feel like an impostor’ – Physics World

Time Stamp: January 5, 2024 8:48 AM

Margaret Gardel
Setting priorities Margaret Gardel in her lab at the University of Chicago. (Courtesy: Margaret Gardel)

What skills do you use every day in your job?

That’s an interesting question, because they are skills I would never have expected would be so important when I was an undergraduate studying physics. I use a lot of time management and emotional regulation skills. A lot of my work now is self-organized: I have to organize and lead my research group, and I need to know how to prioritize the different activities we’re doing.

The third skill is harder to express succinctly, but I have had the good fortune of doing research in a lot of different areas, and I know the approaches that work or don’t work. So, one skill I really enjoy using is finding parallels between different areas of physics, chemistry or biology and using those parallels to gain insights into how to make a problem more tractable.

What do you like best and least about your job?

I love the fact that I get to work with motivated and brilliant people. When I became interested in continuing to be a scientist – and it wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I really thought this was something I wanted to do for my career – one of my main motivations was that you get to work within a community of people who are all very excited about what they do. They’re self-motivated and creative and brilliant, and this is a fun aspect of my job.

Another thing I love is the new opportunities it brings. When I was a PhD student, I was working in the lab, and that was my main job: working in the lab and making advances in one small area of science. I didn’t quite appreciate how that would lead to, for instance, having an interview with you today. Back then, I didn’t understand how to communicate more broadly to people outside my field, but I love the fact that my career allows me to constantly learn new things, both in physics and outside of physics.

What I don’t like about my job is having to say “no”. I’m constantly having to prioritize and say “no” to opportunities I would love to be able to do. That’s hard, and it makes me feel bad that I can’t do everything. I don’t like that.

What do you know today that you wish you had known at the start of your career?

I spent a lot of time feeling like an imposter – I still do – and I wish I could tell myself 20 years ago that it’s okay to feel that way and you just have to get used to it. I had people tell me this at the time, and I didn’t believe it, but it’s okay to feel uncertain. You just have to manage those feelings. I would have saved myself a lot of stress, worry and time spent not feeling very good about myself if I’d known that.

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