Imposter Syndrome
I’m constantly feeling like a fraud. And a tiny, admittedly selfish part of me often hopes that everyone else also constantly feels like a fraud. Just so I’m not alone, so I’m not left in the dust.
But if that’s not the case – if not everyone feels like an imposter – then who am I actually competing against, if not the tiny voice in my head that whispers that I’ll never be good enough? Like a broken record.
I’ve got a friend. She’s a year younger than me and currently taking courses that are equivalent to what I had been taking last year. More and more, as the semester trudges on into its most ghoulish few weeks, I’m seeing her sit at her desk late into the night, poring endlessly over her notes. I’m seeing her pass up opportunities to go out and explore in favor of studying.
In her, it’s hard not to see a reflection of myself. We’re studying the same subjects. We’re planning for similar career paths. We’re both new to New York: I’m only here for the semester, whereas she’s a sophomore feeling like a freshman, on campus for the first time. But above all, we’re both uncertain. Or maybe it’s just me that is. Maybe, it’s just confirmation bias on my part.
I see her look over her work a couple times before submitting. And I think of assignments that don’t take too long to finish but take forever to finally let go of. Repeating until I can play back what I’ve written from memory, like an oath.
I can hear her answer a question in her online class but preface it with an offhand comment that she could be wrong. I know what she’s saying is objectively correct; I learned about it just a year ago, in a class very similar to her own. And so, I think of every moment where I’ve shied away from the spotlight, maybe turning my camera off on Zoom before giving an answer. Reevaluating my knowledge and my skills until I feel like they aren’t truly my own.
She tells me she just works hard, is dedicated to her studies and committed to delivering what’s closest to perfection. And I think of the many occasions when I’ve echoed those very sentiments. She says just she doesn’t think she’s smart. That’s it. But I think of how I feel each and every time those exact words fall from my own lips. I think about how I’ve reserved the term ‘smart’ for people who don’t hesitate once, people who exude confidence — people so unlike me. I think about how scared I am sometimes that someone is going to recognize me for my skills, only for the rest of the world to laugh at me.
In her, it’s hard not to project myself. Maybe, I’m just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Maybe, it really is confirmation bias. Maybe, I’ve been secretly hoping she feels insecure like me when she does things I’ve done too. Maybe, I’ve just been wishing others see themselves as I do.
I’ve got another friend. He’s a year older and taking courses that are completely different from mine. We’re on different campuses in different countries; I hadn’t caught up with him for a while, but we somehow could coordinate our schedules enough for one FaceTime call. As he grows older, less and less does he resemble what I remember him to be. And sure, it’s almost certain that people will change pretty substantially as they transition from their early teenage years to their 20s. It’s still difficult to adjust to, as an outsider looking in. Recalling when he would be so self-assured as to shout it out from a mountaintop, and trying to reconcile that image with the new reality of someone whose insecurities appear in the newfound of their mouth.
In him, it’s hard not to see someone so distinctly different. He’s still smiling a lot. He’s still cracking the dumb jokes he used to. But above all, he’s hesitating more. Almost every third sentence reveals an underlying insecurity in his skills, in his performance among his peers, in the trajectory that his future might take when he graduates soon. And this time, I’m almost positive I’m not reading too much into it. I’ve shared many candid conversations with him, and I’m privy to some of what he’s feeling.
So, I understand when he tells me he’s obsessively checking school acceptance rates and requirements and doing impressive feats of math. I think of the second half of senior year of high school, when all that mattered was improving my chances of acceptance. Rechecking to see if I’d match up, to see if School X would be so gracious as to give me an acceptance even if I think other people might be a better fit.
I understand when he tells me he’s doubting if what he’s done will ever be enough. I think of when I’ve read through online forums, and basically compared my entire life to others’. Resenting myself for not doing more, even when I know I’m at my limit.
He tells me he’s in that awful stage where everything’s teetering the line between being wonderful or turning into a nightmare. He says he’s not nearly as competitive as he used to be. He says those people have racked up thousands of hours of field experience, people who exude confidence like he once did. He jokes that interviewers are going to crap all over his application.
In him, it’s hard not to see someone so distinctly familiar. Maybe, I’m just trying to deny what’s been there all along. Maybe, I’ve been making a mountain of the molehill between us. Maybe, I’ve been secretly wishing I didn’t see myself exactly as he does himself.
I think it’s time to be honest with myself. There’s a previous draft to this piece; in fact, at a certain point, it was the final draft. I wasn’t all too happy with it, but then again, that isn’t out of character for me. If it’s common for me to be insecure about assignments that are worth less than 5% of my grade, then it’s probably ten times worse for a piece like this.
Ironically, I was reading over the original draft and it felt so fraudulent. I was writing a piece about feeling like an imposter, while willfully skirting around the truth. So here it is: I’m constantly feeling like a fraud. My voice gets lower and meeker in interviews, like a child unwilling to encroach on their parents having ‘grown-up talk’, even if the whole meeting was scheduled for me. I struggle with taking pride in my work in a healthier way; it’s my default to inwardly glow under praise but outwardly diminish my efforts. A part of me hopes everyone feels the same way and lunges at the chance to justify myself through someone else. Another part has tried to deny it at every turn, when it gets too evident, when someone else comes too close to verbalizing how I feel.
In writing this now, for the first time, I’m pretty much coming to terms with so much of what’s caused me anguish in life.
I whisper to myself that I’ll never be good enough, like a broken record. And now, I’m looking to fix it.
