How to shake off the 'impostor' fears that plague your PhD studies: three strategies for fighting those insidious feelings that you don’t deserve to be where you are

Often, I feel like a complete fraud. As a PhD student in biomedical engineering, I realize that this feeling is irrational. But I cannot quite shake off the sense that I am just one of those lucky individuals who happened to be accepted into a PhD programme; that perhaps my two previous degrees were awarded in error; that any minute, someone will come along and politely inform me that it’s all been some big mistake.
I have been coping with what is popularly known as impostor syndrome, a recognized ailment that many researchers face down at nearly every stage of their career. When you are consistently fighting off the feeling that you simply don’t deserve to be a junior researcher, and that at any moment your deception will be discovered, it can make the PhD journey exceptionally difficult to navigate.