We had our second general meeting last week for UPE where we went through the Bias Busters workshop that came out of Google, where we discussed unconscious bias, stereotype bias, as well as many other topics and how to deal with these scenarios when they arrive. I’d like to talk about a topic that really resonated with me: imposter syndrome. This is not to say that unconscious bias and stereotype bias are less important or any less “real”, but to me, imposter syndrome is something I think everyone feels at one time or another and I have more experience in this area than perhaps the other areas.
Imposter syndrome is this thought that comes into your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough. That you don’t belong where you are today and that one day, people will realize you’re just “faking” everything, even though you’re not. It’s the mindset you get when you look around and you see everyone else around you is so much more accomplished and smarter and better and you just feel like you don’t belong.
And how can you not feel this way sometimes when you go to college? Especially to you Berkeley peeps? There are so many genius students, everyone you talk to seems to be taking an unbelievable course load and doing five different clubs/extracurriculars and have hundreds of internship offers from every company you can name, and you just feel out of place.
I remember during my orientation before freshman year, I went to this workshop on “exceeding in STEM”. And the professor talked about how difficult classes are, even the easy ones, and how you’ll really struggle through them. And then he asked the workshop, “Who has taken AP Calc?”, and literally everyone’s hand except mine shot up in the air. “Who’s taken Calc BC?”, and everyone’s hand remained in the air and people were now kind of glancing at me. “What about multivariable? Differential equations? Linear algebra? Real analysis?”, and on and on and then people’s hands went down a couple at a time. And I distinctly remember feeling like I was definitely going to drop out of Berkeley after my first semester. And maybe I should have not played pingpong as much and focused on high school more. Looking back, I did not drop out after first semester, and I definitely do not wish I played less pingpong.
I remember my first CS61A discussion. I remember filling out a form that asked you about your experience in computer science and I checked off nothing. Glancing over to other student’s laptops, I saw many other students filling out that they knew multiple languages and frameworks and all of this other stuff that I still have no clue about today. And I felt like I shouldn’t be here.
I remember last semester taking my first exam in Convex Optimization and getting below two standard deviations (i.e. 16% when the average was 60%) on my first quiz. I remember going to every office hours trying to figure out what was happening and getting looks from other students who were machine learning experts when I asked questions on simpler topics that I did not grasp as easily. Sometimes, I felt like the GSIs didn’t even understand my questions because they just operated on a higher level. I thought many times about dropping the class and just doing something else. Looking back, I am very grateful I took the course and I ended up doing pretty well and learning a lot.
These are just a few examples. And I’m sure everyone has their own stories of feeling inadequate. But how do we deal with imposter syndrome? Where does it come from?
I think it comes from the fact that every student at Berkeley is already at a high level, but then you feel like you aren’t because everyone else is. I like to say that one of my favorite things about Berkeley is that I’m always surrounded by amazing people. There’s so much to learn from others and being around amazing people is how you become more amazing. And my least favorite part about Berkeley is being surrounded by amazing people. It’s hard to stand out or to feel like you matter when it feels like everyone can do you what you do or more.
But if we shift our thinking from the second way to the first way more often, we might have a different perspective. We’re here to learn. And “if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”. Surround yourself with people smarter, better, more experienced than you. And if you can think about it in terms of learning potential rather than a discouraging factor, then you will get so much out of it.
Another important thing is to realize that your achievements are not a mistake or by luck. If you go to college, that college accepted you and did not mess up. UC Berkeley is a prestigious school, and you don’t keep a high level of intelligent students by randomly picking students or making mistakes. They wanted you here. And for any other achievement, sure, maybe some luck factored into it, but I’m sure your hard work and dedication and talent also did a lot, and fortune favors the brave.
And I think the last piece of advice that you should spend some time with yourself and learning what makes you special. This is something that I realized through recruiting. That although most companies never ask you “Why are you the best person for the job? What makes you different than everyone else?”, you should know. You should know who you are and why you are unique. Because if you don’t know or don’t believe it, no one else will. And knowing that what makes you special and unique will give you character that gives you a strong comeback to whenever these thoughts of inadequacy come into your mind.
Everyone feels imposter syndrome sometime. It’s a never ending battle. But being in this battle means you have a lot to potential to learn, a lot of potential to grow as a person, and a lot of potential to prove these thoughts wrong.