While immensely fun and incredibly rewarding, college is undeniably stressful. Getting through all of your commitments is challenging enough, and yet it always seems that the person next to you is somehow doing more than you, and they’re doing it better too. Unfortunately, a lot of us partake in the unnecessary and unhealthy practice of comparing ourselves constantly to those around us, so that even if we are successful in our own endeavors, it can still feel like we’re lacking in many areas.
Impostor Syndrome can basically be chalked up to the feeling that you don’t deserve to be where you are in life, and that at any moment someone will discover your fraudulency and see you for what you really are: an impostor. This feeling is described by the American Psychological Association as a deeply specific form of self-doubt, and it makes a lot of us feel like we don’t belong. In the highly stressful, highly competitive environment of a college campus, the likelihood of feeling the effects of Impostor Syndrome are very high.
In college, it’s not just the person next to you who seems to have their entire life together with a beautifully organized fifteen year plan, a stellar GPA, and list of prestigious internships – it feels like everyone is on the same boat on the river of success and you’re just chilling on the bank. Every time your friend gets another research position or internship or promotion at work, you’re happy for them of course, but it also sends an uneasy feeling down to the pit of your stomach. You didn’t get another research position or internship or promotion at work. Then you scroll through your newsfeed and see a bunch of your friends are doing great and amazing things in their own academic careers. That’s when you wonder if maybe you got into your college on a fluke, like maybe you were some crazy admissions error and any day now all of your peers are going to realize you never should have been admitted, if they haven’t already. You’re a fraud in student’s clothing, and you can’t possibly belong in a place where everyone around you is doing so well and you’re not.
But the thing about Imposter Syndrome is that you don’t want others to know you’re an imposter if you can help it, so you fake it. You pretend to know what you’re doing when you study for your Biology final and you apply for internships you don’t actually think you have a shot at getting. You push yourself to expand your social circles and join more extra-curriculars even if deep down you feel completely alone in a room full of all of your friends. You decide you’re going to fake it until you make it because what other option do you have?
It doesn’t occur to you that everyone else is doing the same thing. You’re so busy focusing on the illusion of security and confidence that those around you are projecting that you don’t notice the similarly hidden insecurities that poke out from the cracks. It’s college. We’re all struggling and we all question our own ability to succeed. It’s scary and it’s challenging and we really don’t have our lives together at all. But at the end of the day we’re not alone in our struggles. Because if we all kind of feel like impostors, then really none of us can be.
