Twenty-five years after earning my B.S. in Education, I’m heading back to school as a graduate student. I’m so excited!
I’m starting coursework toward a Master of Arts in Education concentrating on Gifted Education and Talent Development. It will likely be a long haul, because for the next few years with my kids in high school, I plan to take one course per semester.
I loved my college years so much, and I’m really looking forward to being back in an academic setting. I’m also nervous! What if I can’t keep up the perfect GPA I had back then (back when I had very few other responsibilities, besides making my bed and attending sorority chapter meetings on time!)? What if I’m not as smart as I think I am?
I gave one of my kids an “imposter syndrome is a liar” pep talk on her third day of school, and it turns out I probably needed to hear it, too.
“First of all: you CAN do this. And second of all: it DOES feel harder than anything you’ve ever tackled before. You just leveled up! That doesn’t mean you are out of your depth or that you aren’t smart enough. It just means that you’re challenging yourself. It’s totally normal to feel nervous when you take on new challenges. You can do hard things.”
Imposter syndrome is pretty common among high achievers. We tend to discount or downplay our previous accomplishments. Folks battling imposter syndrome don’t draw from those memories as proof that they can handle the new task in front of them; instead, they worry that the previous “wins” are flukes and are actually evidence that they aren’t ready for whatever lies ahead.
We also tend to catastrophize the normal small mistakes that come with early learning. (Someday, I should tell the stories of alllllll the hobbies, sports, and extracurriculars I quit as soon as they got hard and required effort. I spent my childhood and tween years thinking that if a task wasn’t effortless, that meant I was terrible at it and should stop before I embarrassed myself and others.) However, as the genius writers over at Adventure Time put it:
“Dude, sucking at somethin’ is the first step towards being sorta good at something.” -Jake the Dog
So here’s to trying things, even if we suck at them a little bit. Here’s to going back to something you loved, or starting something brand-new. Here’s to a life-long love of learning!
