system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How can you tell if it's Imposter Syndrome or actually real?

I figure that Imposter Syndrome is rampant in academia, and so you've likely experienced it at some point (or still do). I understand that Imposter Syndrome leads you to think that you don't belong and aren't good enough for whatever endeavour you're attempting, but how can you know if that feeling is actually correct or not? If I have a gut feeling that I'm just not cut out for something, how do I know if it's Imposter Syndrome or an accurate bit of intuition? Surely since I know how hard I work and how the results scale with that, I should be in the best position to judge how good my work is.
gpt
Judge yourself by the same metric everyone else does: publications, citations, and research output.

If a few years go by, you try your hardest, and you still can't manage to publish anything at good venues, maybe it's time to try something else. I'd give it at least a few years though, you can't really expect to do much meaningful work for a while. I'd dig in until then. Comparing yourself too prematurely is likely to just induce unnecessary stress.