In microbiology, you can study microorganisms analyzing the genetic material (DNA/RNA), the morphology or cell structure with microscopy pictures, and/or cultivating them. When you wanna compare and find similarities between organisms, you are not comparing the color of a cultured colony of a certain microorganism against the genetic material of another organisms. You cannot do it because these are different approaches with completely separate focus! (like in spanish we say “you are comaring apples against pears”). Therefore, you compare between the genetic material (as genome) between organisms. The same happens when you compare your own progress with other students.

Sometimes when I see the great progress of some colleagues and friends I feel super amazed, but on the same way, sometimes I feel bad about my slow progress in my research field. This isn’t help to my imposter syndrome*. But each student progress is unique, because their research field is different and specialized in a unique topic. Each one has also a different background that we need to consider.

So, as we don’t compare unrelated experiments, don’t compare your progress with other people and continue with your unique focus to accomplish your studies!

*The imposter syndrome is a mental health issue, which you can feel as you don’t have the knowledge/skills that you supposedly have. You feel like you are faking and someone will realize you aren’t so good for your job/role.