Am I really cut out for a PhD?

Hey!

I’m a new PhD student in ECE. It’s been two months since I started, and honestly, I feel completely out of my depth. I can’t shake this overwhelming sense of inadequacy, like I don’t deserve to be here. It’s exhausting and makes me feel stupid, like I’m bound to fail, quit halfway, and let everyone down, including myself.

These feelings didn’t come out of nowhere. They’ve been haunting me since my undergrad days. I was a C student, rarely ever got A’s. My academic advisor even suggested I quit my major because I “wasn’t cut out for it.” I seriously considered it but somehow managed to scrape through to graduation. My CGPA was the lowest in my batch, and when I graduated, I still had no idea what I had learned. My degree feels like a source of shame, something I’d bury and forget about if I could.

When I go to my department and see the students and lecturers, I feel like a stranger, like I don’t belong there. It feels like a place for geniuses, not for someone dumb like me.

When I got into my Master’s program, I swore I’d turn things around. It was coursework based, no research involved (just a project paper in the final semester), and there wasn’t even a viva voce to stress over. To my surprise, it went really well. I aced my courses, earning 99% A’s, and my supervisor was incredibly kind. She encouraged me to turn my project paper into a thesis, helped me present at conferences, and even co-authored two papers with me. I finished with no corrections on my paper, which felt surreal.

But even with all that, I couldn’t shake the imposter syndrome. It all felt like a fluke, like sheer dumb luck, not my effort or abilities. Deep down, I still see myself as the same pathetic, clueless C student I was in undergrad.

Now I’m here in a PhD program, where the stakes are higher, the journey tougher, and there’s no smooth path or lucky breaks to rely on. Part of me is excited by the challenge, but the doubt weighs so heavily. I’m terrified I’ll give up when it gets too hard, and I don’t want to disappoint myself again. I don’t want to choose comfort over a long-term challenge that could change my life.

I fear the comprehensive examination next year. I’m terrified I won’t pass it. But even before that, I’m struggling with the literature review. Reading papers feels like an impossible task. I procrastinate because I’m scared I won’t understand them. And when I do read, I often get stuck on certain information, unable to make sense of it, which leaves me frustrated and feeling even more inadequate. Literature review feels like hell.

I want to break out of this mindset and become someone I can be proud of, someone who can look back in a few years and say, “I can’t believe I did it.” I want to feel like I belong in this journey.

Will I succeed? Will I ever truly feel like I’m fit to be a PhD student?