As I sat down to consider the themes that have followed me on my journey through these four years at UW, I was stumped. Sure, there were constant moments of recognizing the growth of my independence, finding my identity, understanding my passions, and realizing the positive power of change, but all of these moments are almost expected when you spend four years following your own path to your own definition of success. But what I came to realize, was that throughout all of these “ah ha” moments of change, growth, and success, I have carried with me the self-doubt that those moments of good were fleeting and lucky, not earned or expected. From my first day on UW’s Campus, sitting in Math 124 looking around at the students who seemed to understand the derivatives better than myself, to my last quarter at UW, scanning my Econ 401 classroom, looking for the students who are nodding in agreement as the instructor explains some complicated economics model, I have struggled with Imposter Syndrome.
Imposter Syndrome is a false and sometimes crippling belief that one’s successes are the product of luck or fraud, rather than skill. Viola Davis, American Actress and Activist, one said that “what [imposter syndrome] does is it keeps you striving for excellence, wanting to do better, and wanting to get it right even when you feel like you never hit it. Doubt keeps you in the process, and it keeps you honest” (Merriam-Webster). Davis uses Imposter Syndrome as a motivator to continue trying for success, almost succumbing to the idea that the self doubt is important and deserved, rather than the idea that it is crippling and unwarranted. For me, Imposter Syndrome has kept me striving for success, but my self-doubt has crippled me into thinking that I am simply not good enough, not smart enough, and not talented enough to do ___.
In March 2018, I spoke with Dr. Vicky Lawson, who, while directing the honors program at UW, also manages to find time to mentor and guide me through important times in my UW career. In various encounters I have had with Vicky, she has urged me to think deeply about why I am doubtful of my abilities. When I downplayed successes, and said things like “I don’t know if I can…”, “I’m worried that I won’t…”, “I can’t stop thinking that…”, “I don’t know how that happened…” she said “It’s not ‘I don’t know’, or ‘I’m worried’. You have had so many successes, that at this stage, you can’t think of them as one-off moments. You are a smart, talented, and hard working individual. You just need to believe it”.
So here I was, at the start of my last quarter at UW, still wrestling with the same self-doubt that I started with. It makes me question how much I really grew, if I am still wrestling with this inward battle of constantly downplaying success to the point where I don’t think I can repeat it. While it does encourage me to continue reaching higher, keeping me constantly striving to be better, and keeping me honest, just as it does with Viola Davis, it also cripples me in a way that inhibits me from living a full life. I spend hours worrying about exams after I’ve taken them, believing that my stroke of luck on the first exam will not be repeated again. I have run so many miles thinking about how every successful race I have had, from breaking 19 minutes in the 5K, to being 1 second off from breaking 18 minutes in the 5K just 2 years later, that I forget that I’m actually running. I spent so much time trying to prove myself to my running coach (and elite club that I later joined in 2017) that I badly injured myself due to overtraining just a month before my second Boston Marathon. My success as a runner felt lucky, not earned. I spent so much time in the LSE library, doubting that I would succeed on the cumulative end of year exams because “I was just lucky to get into the school”. Then, when getting my exam scores back from the LSE in July 2017, I was shocked at how good the results were. When I came back to UW, I stressed unnecessarily in my advanced microeconomics and behavioural economics classes, believing that I didn’t truly learn much from my success at the LSE, and that a failure was bound to happen soon, because that’s how it works, right?
During an office hour with my professor for an ethnographic writing course I took the Spring of 2018, my professor said "I see that there is a lot of nervousness surrounding your grades and your achievement: you seem to be addicted to achievement". I struggled immensely with this comment because I realized it was true. After any achievement, I do not feel satisfied. I always crave more, believing that I simply was lucky in that success, and that I needed to set a new goal in order to test my abilities. But for me, success has always been meeting a goal (and questioning how I got there when I attain it), and never about fulfilling myself. In my eyes, success always relates to money, materialistic achievement, or tangible goods. But I don’t believe that this is what fulfilment should look like: fulfilment should be synonymous with contentment, daily “wins”, and not wanting to strive for more, because there is happiness with what has already been earned. It is for that reason that I cannot aggregate success and fulfilment into one word, because I will always strive for higher successes, reaching for the moon and landing in the stars (the cheesy but valid Norman Vincent Peale quote). But fulfilment to me is that feeling you get when I’m 10 miles out on the Burke Gilman Trail, running a full stride on a crisp morning. Or a feeling I get when I have a cup of tea at night and watch the Office for much longer than I can afford to. Or when I take out a really amazing banana bread from the oven and send a picture to my parents. I did not feel fulfilled when I 4.0 my advanced microeconomics class, or even when I finished the 2018 Boston Marathon in the worst conditions the race has seen. I felt a sense of achievement, but not fulfilment. For me, fulfilment is internal, and can only be brought about by my own reflection of how happy I am in a given moment in time, whereas success is something that is created by external factors. I think slowly, focusing on fulfilment and "the little things" can help me find happiness in the face of crippling self doubt.
I wish that this statement ended with a triumphant story about believing in myself, but the process is lengthy and arduous. Simply telling a person with chronic imposter syndrome that they should just believe in themselves, and stop comparing themselves to others (or in my case, to myself) doesn’t equate to that person suddenly banishing unnecessary worries of failure. But this type of recognition is a step towards success. As I write this statement, I am about to graduate from UW with college honors and begin my life as a young professional at EY. I am determined to take steps along the way to dispel unnecessary feelings of self-doubt. As a true marathoner would say upon toeing the start line of the 26.2 mile feat, “trust your training”. UW was my training for my professional, independent, and full life as a young adult. I have accumulated many successes and failures under my belt in these 4 years, which I will document here in this portfolio, and it is now time for me to use my successes to build a base for believing in myself as a courageous, hard working, and intelligent young woman.