One skill that I thought I had a handle on from all of my experience in job searching and simply being in the working world was the ability to promote myself. I did my first ever job search back in 2006 when it was still common to print out your resume and physically go into a place of business, ask to see the manager, shake their hand and give them your application. Now (for the most part) it’s simply a matter of going online, uploading a resume, filling out the online forms and hoping you stand out amongst the crowd. And since so many people are doing this, I’ve gotten pretty good at making my resume and cover letters impressive.

But… self-promotion in academia is different. It’s a lot harder, and it’s a skill I’m going to have to work on. In Canada, a CV (Curiculum Vitae) is different from a resume. The formatting is a lot looser, which gives you more freedom to showcase what you need to, but that also means doing some research in your industry to know what it is you need to showcase. The nice thing is that there are plenty of resources available to help. If you’re attending a college or university, there is usually a student career centre there to help. There are also many websites with templates and samples. In the sciences, it is common for CV’s to get written in LaTeX, and Overleaf.com has many templates available for download. I was very lucky to have a mentor help me write mine, and as I add more and more to it she can review it quite easily as a collaborator on Overleaf.

But promoting yourself isn’t just for job searching in academia. There are many times in which you need to be able to “sell” yourself: grad school applications, scholarship applications, award/grant applications, co-op placement searches, the list goes on and on, and it will never end for the rest of your career. Recently I sent in an application for an award that was recommended to me, and it was a bit of a struggle. My CV is only worth 30% of the consideration for this award. The other 70% was a short essay in which I had to describe my contributions to the Canadian Astroparticle Phyics Community in three categories: research, community building, and science communication. I also had to answer what being an “HQP” (highly qualified personnel) in science means to me.

I absolutely struggled with this. And it wasn’t because it was a difficult essay to write, it just felt incredibly uncomfortable to do so. It felt a lot like… well, bragging. And bragging is hard to do, especially when you’re fighting with imposter syndrome (check out this post for my thoughts on imposter syndrome: click here). It was such a different feeling than making a CV. If I were to give the essay a title, it could be: Why I’m the Best in Under 600 Words.

And if you are someone who struggles with imposter syndrome like me, then you know you never actually feel like you’re the best at anything. So I wrote a first draft and sent it to four people: a professor, and three mentors and friends from the lab at which I’ve been working as a student. One of the mentors from the lab was my actual supervisor for the last two summers and provided me with a list of things I had accomplished, things I hadn’t even realized were accomplishments. He said: “Play up tbe research more. You did a lot of work and should lead (harder than you have in your draft) with the science. You did much more than you are giving yourself credit for.” Another one has had many long talks with me about EDI and science communication, and his feedback was: “…I think you can be more specific in at least a few places…I think you can be more forceful here…Polite bragging is the goal with things like this.”

You can probably tell from the feedback I held back in my initial draft. So I updated it. I added more. I bragged (politely). It was very uncomfortable, yes, but I grit my teeth and I pushed through it. And at the end, I had four really condensed paragraphs that made me stop and go: “Wow… I’ve done a LOT.” And that was a pretty neat feeling, I’ll admit. Submitting the award application was still incredibly nerve-wracking, but you never get the things you don’t apply for.

If you’re reading this expecting me to say it get’s easier, I can’t. Not yet, anyway. It was a new experience for me. People have told me that it does get easier, but I won’t know that until I do it again. And again. And again. But I will tell you that it is something you can do, even if it’s not easy. You can be your own hype man – cheer yourself on, learn to brag, and put yourself out there. And it’s fine if it feels hard or uncomfortable, you can have those feelings and simply do it anyway. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

In case anyone is interested, here is my essay entitled “Why I’m the Best in Under 600 Words”:

In my two completed years of undergraduate studies in physics, I have contributed to research, community building and science communication.

For two summers, I worked with the DEAP-3600 dark matter experiment at SNOLAB helping to rebuild process systems between the second and third fills through citric acid washing components, reassembling, and leak checking the system. I assisted with replacing acrylic flow guides to reduce alpha backgrounds. I wrote code to analyze in real time the quality of the gas in the systems as high purity is crucial. I played a major role in the third liquid argon fill. I automated light-yield calculations and monitored light-yield trends in real time, which are directly related to the purity of the argon. I presented a poster at the Women+ In Physics Conference discussing the hardware upgrades, including a plot showing that the pulse shape discrimination, (the tool that determines event types in the detector) was working as expected. In this way I contributed to research in astroparticle physics.

I was invited to talk about neurodivergence in science to the SNOLAB research division and user community. I also ran an EDI workshop that led people to think critically and have conversations about gender minorities in science and mental wellness. I created a website (fromthemargins.ca) to share my journey and experiences in science and academia as someone with a unique background in an effort to reach and encourage others who may have a similar story. Through the efforts at SNOLAB I have made contributions in community building in the Canadian astroparticle physics community. The website allows me to reach not only the science community, but the global community.

On my website I also have a section called Science Snippets in which I explain scientific concepts using accessible language and creative metaphors. One example of this was explaining neutrinos using flavours of coffee. I also designed an in-class game inspired by the McDonald Institute’s Astroparticle Physics Community Card Game at Carleton University in which students collaborate across disciplines, adapt to challenges, come up with scientific solutions to problems like colonizing Mars or building a space elevator, and present these in a culminating activity, promoting teamwork and science communication. These pursuits have allowed me to make contributions in science communication to the astroparticle physics community, and the global community as a whole.

To me, being a highly qualified personnel (HQP) means having not only the responsibility but the privilege to participate in research as well as contribute to the physics community. It is important to apply my skills and knowledge to help other HQP and the leaders in the scientific community, as well as being open to learning from them. It is important to me to play a role in fostering inclusion and to help create the welcoming environment that we wish to see in the physics community.  In all of my classes, I work and study as hard as I can to become the best scientist I can be so I can continue contributing in ways that this community needs me to. In any place I work and any team I work on, I do my best to put my hands and knowledge to good use, and to learn as much as possible from those around me. Even as an undergraduate student, I am already working to share my knowledge and encourage others. I do not take for granted the opportunities in front of me, and am grateful for each step in my career.