The Imposter

I knew that I wanted to attend graduate school at the University of Tennessee the moment I stepped foot on campus. Before that point, UT was just one of the schools I was interviewing at, remarkable only in its distance from friends and family. But as soon as I saw the campus, I could imagine myself there.

I was on pins and needles for weeks while I waited to find out if I had been accepted. I can remember where I was standing and what the weather was like the day that I opened my letter.

The words said, “wait list,” but my heart heard a firm no and a slamming door. I sat in my car and sobbed to my parents. I critically examined my other options and tried to image myself somewhere else.

Two weeks later I got the call that I was had been accepted. Someone had turned down their spot, and I was in.

I told the professor who called me, “That’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard.”

I sat in my car and cried happy tears to my parents. It felt like my dreams were falling back into place. I could imagine my life as a graduate student at UT, and I was so excited.

I never expected that when I got there, I would feel like I didn’t belong. I sat in my very first class and looked at the other students. Students who hadn’t been on the wait list, but who had earned their spot the first go round. Students who were smarter, older, and more experienced. I was a fake, an impostor, and it was only a matter of time before everyone figured out that I shouldn’t be sitting in that room.

I lived under that belief for a whole year, waiting for everyone to find out that I was a fraud. I was convinced that everyone belonged there except me, that it was only a matter of time before they realized their mistake and asked me to leave.

At the end of that first year I went to dinner with a group of classmates. One of my classmates shared that she had been accepted off the wait list, and she had felt like the biggest fake since day one. Another classmate shared that she had felt out of place because she was the oldest student. Another felt he didn’t belong because his master’s degree was in “the wrong branch of psychology.”

One by one we all shared the stories we had told ourselves about why we didn’t belong, why we were the impostor. The stories were different, but the message was the same.

I don’t belong, I shouldn’t be here, I am a fake. Pretty soon people would find out that we weren’t as smart or capable as we had tricked them into believing, and we would be kicked out.

The really funny thing is that we were all PhD students in Psychology. We had heard of Impostor Syndrome, and each one of us could have told you that it was the feeling of being a fraud and the fear of being exposed as a fake. None of us felt like it applied to us, because of each of us thought we really were the impostor.

The research suggests that about 80 percent of people feel like impostors at some point. Four out of five people experience Impostor Syndrome. For many, this occurs in a work or academic setting. For others, in a social group or team setting. No matter where it occurs, it is an experience most of us have at some point or another.

It was life-changing to learn that it wasn’t just me that felt like the fake. We all felt that way; it wasn't just me and my potentially-neurotic classmates. It was incredibly freeing to share my fears and feelings with others and realize I was not alone.

Time and experience help too. As we acclimate to new settings and roles, we begin to see that we do fit and do belong. It may take some work along the way, and if you find yourself struggle with Impostor Syndrome, I recommend the book Presence by Amy Cuddy. Talking with friends, family, and a trusted therapist and learning more about this deeply human phenomenon can make all the difference in the world.

Award winning author Neil Gaiman wrote, “Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.”

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