When Richard Feynman was newly appointed to his position at Princeton, he distinctly remembers feeling like he was out of his comfort zone. He was this no-name physicist who felt entirely unqualified for his position as a professor.
Curiously, he viewed the expectations of his superior as amusing rather than crippling.
“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing."
“I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they're offering me all this compensation for it, it's their hard luck."
At the same time, the physicist was going through a bout of self-described burnout from his last position. He describes a mindset shift he went through that helped him become productive again.
“I got this new attitude. Now that I am burnt out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position...I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever."
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