CULTURE
IMPOSTER
SYNDROME AND HOW TO FIX IT WRITTEN BY
Dorothy Zhao ILLUSTRATED BY
Maria Ahmad
Or, at least, how to live with it. You aren’t alone when you feel like a fraud in a sea of successful people.
F
ake it ‘til you make it. That’s what everyone tells me. Even if I don’t feel confident or know enough to fulfill every qualification, that’s okay! And, besides, I’m qualified anyway, right? My resume
is two pages, I have a full-time job offer after grad-
uation and I’ve been selected as a valedictorian candidate of the Washkewicz College of Engineering. Every morning, I wake up and feel like I’m choking. Or drowning. Or losing. I feel this overwhelming urge to give up entirely on school, my career and my future. Imposter syndrome affects everyone, but especially high achievers and minorities. Anyone who has the pressure of accomplishing tasks for the first time in their family or generation can relate. As an Asian American woman in engineering, I especially felt isolated and like an imposter. I desperately wanted to belong and to be accepted by my peers and professors since the first day of class freshman year.
As a last semester senior, I worry about heading into the workplace this summer after graduation. I know I’ll feel hesitant and unsure of myself and my skills. I know I’ll probably think “I’m only here because I’m a diversity hire” or “I’m in this position of a software developer solely due to the fact that my abilities have been vastly overestimated.” In work environments, women have a tendency of judging their own performance as worse than they actually are or attributing their success to just luck. In the 1978 paper titled “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Inter vention” and w ritten by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, they define this phenomenon as an internal experience of “intellectual phonies.” They surveyed women who had “outstanding academic and professional accomplishments” but believed they are not actually intelligent. These women affected by the imposter syndrome reported having symptoms like generalized anxiety, lack of self confidence and depression. The women inter viewed think they’ve fooled those around them, despite their achievements. Clance and Imes enumerated four behaviors that maintains the imposter syndrome I thought were intriguing and enlightening. First, because the fear that one’s lack of ability will be discovered is always present, one studies and works diligently to prevent that discover y. There is a reinforcing cycle of worrying about one’s intelligence, working hard to cover up insecurities and receiving adequate grades or performance. I know I’ve gone through several of these cycles and the feelings of success are addicting, described the belief of thinking one could actually but fleeting. Clance and Imes succeed, then one would instead fail as that of a “magical ritual,” to which I agree. I can’t believe I can succeed, but I’m surprised when I do. It feels
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