Riley

@faithisleaping @sundogplanets @danirabbit Oh yes absolutely, it's perfectly normal to be nervous or anxious before something big. In my mind, I put those feelings in a different box from the impostery ones, which are more along the lines of "I'm not good enough to be here, everyone else is smarter/better than me, I don't deserve to be here" etc. I think the imposter phenomenon/environmental/society framing is really about pushing back on the latter, and isn't trying to invalidate being nervous entirely.

@faithisleaping @sundogplanets @danirabbit I went to a talk a couple weeks ago that really changed how I think about my imposter syndrome. Their argument was that calling it a "syndrome" frames it as a personal failing or problem, something you as an individual have to overcome. But if you are a woman or other minority in STEM (or just a minority in your field in general), and are qualified and accomplished and competent and still feel like an imposter, the problem isn't you. The problem is the workplace/environment/society that makes you feel like an imposter even when you objectively are not. They advocated for calling it "imposter phenomenon," because it's a systemic issue and we shouldn't blame ourselves for not fitting the expectations society places on us.

Why write clever code that can be parallelized when you can just have four instances of matlab running at once??

I successfully defended my PhD yesterday! The school doesn't collect stats on this, but as far as anyone is able to tell it seems that I am first out trans person to finish their PhD in my department

Just submitted the final paper of my PhD, the end is actually in sight 🎉

Technology frustration of the day: getting a library ebook onto my jailbroken kindle. Such a tremendous pain in the ass to avoid going through Amazon, and because of Adobe's shitty DRM the book is now locked so I can only read it on my computer anyway. Another win for the dystopia I guess.

Anyone got hot job openings for an astrodynamicist/spacecraft trajectory engineer in a country safe for trans people? Asking for a friend who definitely isn't myself... https://bsky.app/profile/planetdr.bsky.social/post/3lqg36uusp22o

@faithisleaping@anarres.family I certainly don't cry outside of therapy (this was part of today's discussion), so gotta get it out somewhere... in any case, thank you 💜

That feeling of crying through an entire therapy session and you've only scratched the surface. I could use a few less things going on in my life, please.

Just because I *can* take apart my laptop and replace a malfunctioning fan, doesn't mean I *want* to do so - this message brought to you by the last hour of fully disassembling my cursed laptop

The only good thing about post-surgery complications, ER visits, and being sick is that I haven't had the bandwidth to be as anxious about the election as I otherwise would've. Still expecting today to be hot trash emotionally though