You Have to Have Confidence Posted on October 16, 2007 There's a self-selection process going on in this field, states Kiki D. Chang (bio).

One could argue, and I probably fall a little more towards that statement in actually that this is something that it can’t be learned, you can’t be taught and you have to have it or else you fail. I’m not sure if that’s 100 % correct. I think that helps a lot. I’ve known people in the field that haven’t had that kind of confidence and who are no longer in that field because they felt like, ‘well, you know funding is dwindling from the NIH, what makes me more likely to get funding than somebody else? I don’t know if I’m cut out to do this’. And again, you have to have some sort of delusional belief in yourself that you are instead say, ‘well, somebody has to get the funding and so it may as well be me and I’m going to do the best job that I can’. I think confidence is also built upon past success. You need past success to do well in this field as well too. So, I think there is a self-selecting portion of that too. I think that people tend to be a little more confident that go into this field but if you don’t have it, try to get it from somewhere including your mentors or just relying on your past successes or your own good therapist.

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