It’s weird because now after finally having officially graduated from my PhD and being confident enough to call myself a scholar, it feels like I’ve always been at this level. But truth be told, that’s definitely not the case. It’s taken so long to get to this point where I actually feel confident about being a scholar, a researcher. Like I genuinely cannot stress enough about the amount of time, patience, commitment to actually learn the skills and do the things that start making us feel ‘academic’ & ‘scholarly’. Be it reading scientific literature with ease, coming up with research questions, present our work confidently, feeling like we belong in scholarly communities, and self-identify with being a researcher, these things don’t just happen overnight as soon as you simply start doing a PhD/gradschool. So I guess this a reminder that if you’re at the start of your journey, and these things aren’t coming to you ‘naturally’ or ‘easily’, then just remember that they never do. . ...