Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Sometimes, I feel like it took an incredible amount of luck to get where I am in life. I am an alum of the McNair Scholars Program, a federally funded project that provides training and support to students from underrepresented populations—students of color and first-generation college students—who wish to pursue a doctoral degree, but lack the resources to navigate grad school applications and graduate student life. Being an intellectually-inclined Black student from a working class family, I have wanted to get a PhD since I was quite young, but at the same time I felt extremely daunted by the reality of the system. I didn’t know where to start.

Enter McNair. My cohort spent 9 months together, crafting project proposals, learning the ins and outs of graduate applications, studying for the GRE, and discussing our research with each other. While STEM representation far outweighed humanities, I was gratified by the willingness of my math and science colleagues to engage with my work, and to find ways to share their own in ways I could understand.

As one might expect when a group of students from underrepresented backgrounds spends nine months meeting regularly, we got to know one another and shared our hopes and fears for the future. We also got the chance to speak with a number of alumni from our own and other McNair Programs, and there was a common thread that most of our cohort and almost every alum brought up at some point: impostor syndrome.

In fact, impostor syndrome has come up in other programs with which I have been involved. This fear that at any second we will be outed as an undeserving fake haunts women and femmes, people of color, and those of us raised working class or poor. We work ourselves to exhaustion to avoid even the possibility of being labeled unworthy, especially when we are a minority in the field, a token presence in a place or industry where few share our identities.

In myself, this tends to manifest as endless qualification. Yes, I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, but it took me 8 yrs of coursework. Yes, I triple majored, but two of those majors were catch-alls that utilized coursework from the three majors I abandoned before I chose Black Studies. I can’t just let someone compliment me, I have to explain how it’s really not that impressive that I did such-and-such a thing.

Lately, I’ve been trying not to do that. I find it deeply uncomfortable, letting people compliment or congratulate me without immediately downplaying the achievement. I smile and say thanks, and I ignore the voice in the back of my head that says it’s not a big deal. I feel awkward, but I try not to minimize what I’ve done, because the reality is that much of it was hard work. I am lucky in the sense that some people who want the same things won’t get them, but getting where I am now was not pure luck.

[Photo showing the quad at the University of Illinois, taken by me from inside my hotel room]

I’ve just returned home from a grad school visit to an amazing program courting me with a very generous funding package. When I walked in, my best friend greeted me and asked how my trip was. They listened with a smile as I gushed over the school, and how excited I was for the program I had chosen, and then gently ribbed me: “What was that, three-months-ago-Tessara? Lamenting that you’d never get into grad school?”

“Shut up!” I laughingly responded, but today I’m reflecting on the trueness of those words. I spent a lot of time afraid that I wouldn’t measure up, that none of the schools I applied to would choose me. Neither of my parents have an advanced degree. I have struggled through physical disability, learning issues, poverty, and stress. Even now I worry that it will all be a dream, that someone will contact me to say they’ve reconsidered, though I know that is highly improbable.

So, have I overcome my impostor syndrome? No. Instead, I am overcoming it, everyday. That little voice is still lurking in my head, trying to siphon off my confidence. It may never be gone, and I have to accept that, but as long as I try my best in spite of my fear, I can know that I earned what I have. My perseverance is mine—I am the one who pushed through my problems. No one could do that except me.

[Photo taken by me on my flight home from Illinois]

This post inspired by Weekly Link Up Party #8: Overcome Fear by @bestowingfire