“I don’t deserve to be where I am, my efforts aren’t good enough, people think I’m a fraud, I don’t deserve my job or accomplishments….”

Feeling this way is called imposter syndrome. Many people are affected by imposter syndrome at some point in their lives, more so in their jobs. Feeling like you’ve succeeded only out of luck and not your hard work. This feeling doesn’t discriminate, it affects all sorts of people from all walks of life.

Imposter syndrome has a nasty way of making a person feel like their accomplishments aren’t good enough when they actually are. It hides what an achievement really is, big or small.

5 years ago, I was proud of starting my undergrad in Computer Science. I was proud of myself for getting through it and graduating 3 years later. Then the reality of having my skills tested in the real world set in. Albeit inevitable, it never felt like it would happen that fast. The safe bubble I was in for 3 years burst wide open, never to be closed again.

So much has happened in those 5 years, but the common denominator in all I have done and achieved is that little voice in my head that always screams “fraud”! Before I properly understood what this feeling meant, it would frighten me to the point where I wouldn’t even want to try to do anything meaningful. Sending out my CV when I was first looking for a job was painfully scary. I felt like I’d break out in hives every time I responded to a job ad.

Being out of school and into the “real world” as popularly known triggered this feeling. Now I finally understand why. I left the comfort of school and I was about to challenge myself and get challenged. My mind was, and still is responding in fear to the new unchartered territory I am heading into.

Occasions when imposter syndrome hits me the hardest

Sometimes, no ALL the time, I get intimidated when I interact with my classmates at Georgia Tech because of how knowledgeable and experienced they are in the Computer Science field. Their decades of software engineering experience compared to my 3 years make me feel like I am in the wrong place, with the wrong people. I should be proud of myself for being in school with experienced people from all over the world and learn from them but instead, I get the false feeling that I don’t belong in that class or that school. I say false because I deserve to be there as much as the next person, yet that’s harder to believe. Two semesters, part of the class’ deliverables was a group project. I was part of a group of probably the most knowledgeable computer scientists I have encountered in all my years. One of them was a mechanical engineer for 10+ years, and he was still working to get a master’s in Computer Science. If that’s not intimidating enough to make me feel like an imposter, I don’t know what is.

Whenever I see the number of views on my blog, I get more nervous than excited. Instead of taking the win of having written and posted an article that people interacted with, I start thinking about why anyone would read it in the first place. It’s a paralyzing feeling that will stop me from writing for weeks on end and for an invalid reason. Deep down I know I don’t have a reason not to write. I have the content, the means, yet the fear will convince me that I can’t and I shouldn’t.

My work involves building features that are part of a system. Starting to work on these features is always exciting, until when it’s time for their launch. This means that other users will use something I took part in building. They’ll respond to it, both negatively and positively. The response isn’t what scares me though, it’s the fact that my work will be used by many other people.

What I have learnt from all this is that the best way to deal with imposter syndrome is by continuing to leave my comfort zone. I am slowly getting used to the feeling because it reminds me that I am improving my skills. Waiting for the feeling to go away in order to do something is a waste of time. It’s not real. It’s only fear in the mind that gets magnified if you let it stop you from doing whatever it is you want to do.

Have you experienced imposter syndrome in any area of your life? Let’s chat in the comments.