This week I started a training programme at a digital content creation company, and I have so many feelings.
There are nine of us in the group, and by Tuesday I could see myself making friends with most of them. Maybe it’s the result of us all being in the same room together for seven hours each day, but I like them. I’m also intimidated by them. Some of them have interviewed celebrities and run magazines, others are brilliant photographers. I feel like I haven’t done enough.
But I also know that this is an opportunity to learn. I want to be a writer, I want to have a steady job that I’m good at one day. I want to be successful. These are all things that I now have a chance to do.
I took notes on the presentations some of the team members gave us, and I enjoyed hearing them speak about their career journeys. I began to understand that this programme would be hard work.
By Wednesday, the curiosity that had been laced with optimism was replaced by a growing dread. I started thinking it was all too much and I wouldn’t be able to do it. The way people around me used the words journalist and creator freaked me out. I’m not a journalist, and I don’t “create” as much as I “consume”. Nothing I do is new, so what am I doing here? Thursday and Friday were tough days.
I remembered how we were told that we could leave at any time if we felt that the programme was not for us, and for a brief, tense moment I considered it. I was getting so scared of the demands that this work would make on me that I considered quitting. But I realised that leaving would be a huge mistake: this is, after all, the chance that I have been waiting for all this time.
On Friday evening, after leaving the office feeling hopeless, I took a shower, hoping to clear my mind. I thought about the past few days, and about how drained and stressed I was. I thought about how confusing and overwhelming the prospect of the next two months of work was. Then a phrase came to me, in the form of a question: “impostor syndrome?”
I had heard the phrase before, and a Google search brought up results that had the same theme:
Impostor syndrome occurs when a qualified woman lives in fear of being “found out” and exposed as an incompetent fraud. Despite knowing her strengths and achievements, she downplays her success, and attributes it to something outside herself – luck, or even the mood of the employer on the day of the initial job interview – instead of her own hard work.
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| Kristin Chirico |
I definitely didn’t feel like I belonged this week. I was always keenly aware of this need to prove myself. I kept looking out for that inevitable moment where I messed up and confirmed everyone’s suspicions. I was perpetually close to tears, tears which threatened to roll out onto my cheeks every time I was asked a question on the spot or when my ideas were not immediately accepted. I felt like saying “okay, fine, you’re right: I can’t do this”, and then curling up in a corner somewhere.
I hate feeling like I am not in control. I hate feeling like I’m being judged. No one at the office has told me that I need to be an expert, and there is no formal evaluation at the end of the programme, but I am still nervous, uncertain – terrified, even.
I think a lot of this is tied to my anxieties about never becoming successful in this life. Maybe it’s all related to the other big worry I’ve had this year: will I ever get it together if I don’t even really know what I want anymore?
Nkhensani Manabe 