Argh! I am so stuck on a piece of work due in tmrw, and I feel so incompetent. Then my supervisor called me and asks me to review with him a series of books that have just come out. They are really signifcant works to my field. And I feel so happy - but so terrified. I feel like a fraud who is just waiting to be exposed. I can barely string a coherent argument together and I feel expectations crashing down on top of me. This PhD really brings out the fear in me, my mental health I mean. I just want to run away from everything.

Calm down! Don't panic Captain Mannering! Of course you can do all these things- your supervisor would not have asked you to do the book reviews if he didn't think you could handle it. Nor would you have got the position if you didn't have the potential.

Take it all one step at a time. Don't worry about the book reviews at the moment. Get as much done on your work for tomorrow as you can, don't worry about it not being perfect, hand it in anyway saying that its not quite finished and suggests parts that you are not happy with. Hopefully your supervisor can give you some constructive feedback and you can proceed with a second draft with some more confidence. Hope this helps! x

You're right. Calm. Calm.

I'm so highly strung sometimes. Nay, all the time. :-$ ;-(

chris, i'm a fraud too. so that makes two of us.

now we just need to figure out how we can fool everyone until we are done.

i once read a book called "uni-fear and uni-bluff" (but in German) that was written by an established professor who said that he STILL feels like a fraud. he still feels he is only bluffing. but it seems to be good enough! sometimes you need to trust other people's evaluation of you - especially if you tend to be overly critical of yourself. they have the experience and all - if they say it's fine, then it's fine, even if to you it feels like you are a fraud.

just clear out what you understand, and what you don't understand. and pick out the most importatn ones of the things you don't understand yet and study them.. Knowing there are somethings you don't know is not fraud, as long as you know what you don't know.. soounds like a twister,