From Fraud to Freedom

By Njoroge

Would it amaze you to learn that even those who are the most accomplished suffer from impostor syndrome? This invisible plague hinders individuals from feeling confident and seizing opportunities. It strikes at the heart of people from all walks of life. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637309650

Book preview

Introduction

Michelle Obama is the former First Lady of the United States, wife of previous president, Barack Obama. She graduated from Princeton University for undergrad and Harvard Law School for her Juris Doctor degree. She became the first African American First Lady and earned higher approval ratings than even her husband Barack while in the White House according to the Washington Post. She’s also the author of the number one bestselling memoir and Grammy award-winning audiobook, Becoming, and was named the most admired woman several years in a row by a national survey of Americans in Gallup.

So, what do you have in common with this well-known, well-accomplished, and well-liked woman?

Impostor syndrome.

Impostor syndrome is defined as the fear of being exposed as a fraud whose achievements aren’t actually well deserved, but arose from luck or deceit, despite a track record of evidence to the contrary (Verywell Mind, 2021).

At the beginning of her senior year at Whitney M. Young High School, a Chicago magnet school, she was required to meet with a college counselor. (Collman, 2019) During that meeting, the counselor shot down Michelle’s dream of planning to attend Princeton University for her undergraduate degree. However, the counselor made a snap judgment on limited information about Michelle and her abilities: ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, giving me a perfunctory, patronizing smile, ‘that you’re Princeton material.’ An experience so traumatizing that Michelle deliberately and almost instantly blotted this experience out.

Despite the counselor’s skepticism, Michelle applied and was accepted to Princeton. When she arrived, she entered the university aware of how others would impugn her because of the color of her skin, her gender, and where she was from. Even in the face of continued success in academics, extracurriculars, and her career, Michelle continued to question her own achievements the way others had questioned it:

Michelle explains this during an interview for The Star TV featured on Youtube. Well, how did I get here if I’ve been told that I’m not good enough?...I was waiting for it, for when I was going to fall and mess up and fail...because that’s what they said [would happen].

I just got lucky.

I’m afraid to ask questions and have everyone find out that I don’t really know anything.

My admission was a fluke.

I’m anxious they’ll say that the offer was a mistake.

I’m not smart enough for this.

"Who am I to be qualified to do this?"

I can’t do this. (Despite doing everything it took to get to that place/point).

Do these statements resonate with you? How many of them have you said? These are some of the things you might catch yourself and others saying when in a new or challenging situation. These are some of the things you might catch yourself saying when you feel like an impostor.

Eventually, Michelle Obama came to realize the game of distrusting herself was not serving her because no one in the spaces that she felt she wasn’t good enough for was all that much better and more qualified than her. She goes on in her interview with the Star to admit that I have been at every powerful table there is...all amazing and talented people, but no better, no smarter, no more worthy, no more capable, no more deserving than me. In a clip on Rickey Smiley’s YouTube channel, she affirms the worth of the women at Spelman College. Your thoughts are just as relevant; your experiences are just as important; your insight is just as valuable.

Michelle admits that we all have doubts in our abilities, about our power and what that power is (Collman, 2019). What shackles us in our experience of impostor syndrome is failing to realize that we are not alone in those feelings. Do not be misled into thinking that if you doubt yourself, there’s something wrong with you.

Although the name was introduced by a study on self-doubt endured by high-achieving women, impostor phenomenon is experienced across the board; people of all genders, experience levels, industries, and backgrounds continue to struggle with it. Psychology Professor Pauline Clance, who introduced the term, reflects, If I could do it all over again, I would call it the impostor experience, because it’s not a syndrome or a complex or a mental illness, it’s something almost everyone experiences (Anderson, 2016). Our fear of being found out keeps us silent but our silence is what creates the environment that contributes to our fear.

Surprisingly, despite how prevalent the problem is, the solutions for it are not as widespread. Imagine a world where people struggle with their weight but the knowledge about the benefits of good diet and exercise are not common. To me, that is the kind of world we are currently living in: people everywhere, of all ages and demographics, struggle with impostor syndrome and yet the things that we can do to help ourselves and each other from being crippled by it are not common knowledge. I felt like that needed to change. If I didn’t see enough solutions around impostor syndrome, then I needed to be one.

My sophomore year of college, at the encouragement of my friends, I signed up to lead a seminar on impostor syndrome at Class Action’s Fifth Annual First-Generation College Student Summit. As a first-generation student, I knew the experience all too well from navigating academics and extracurriculars at a wealthy, private, predominantly white institution (PWI). I was excited for the opportunity to hopefully bring some comfort to my peers who were going through the same challenges.

The day of my seminar, that excitement turned into shock as a I entered a classroom overflowing with people eager to hear what I had to say. I realized that just the name of the topic in the summit’s agenda alone had struck a nerve. This was demonstrated by the fact that every seat in that room was full; people had to stand along the walls in order to find space to fit. Additionally, others had to stand at the door and even more went to a different seminar since our room was overflowing. It ended up being one of the most highly attended and rated events of the summit.

The participation alone was not the thing that struck me, but the diversity of people in that room. Students from all class years—both undergraduate and graduate, genders, ethnic backgrounds, and experiences—were in that room. Beyond that, professors and staff from across the university, including the president of the university, Anthony Monaco, came to listen to a one-hour seminar on impostor syndrome led by little old me. I wondered if the things that I had put on those slides the night before were really going to be worth these people’s time and anticipation. It was quite meta to be experiencing impostor syndrome as the presenter of a seminar on that very same issue.

I had signed up prepared to share an experience that I thought just a group of other students and I could resonate with, only to find that I had underestimated how deeply entrenched this fear of exposure runs through all of us, even after college. That seminar was the first signal to me that there is a gaping need for help in this area. After that event, people asked me to come speak at their schools. Many attendees requested that I share the slides with them personally for future reference. This was not a matter of kind flattery; I had presented something that resonated to the point where they felt the need to bring that useful information to others and to have the ability to refer to it in the future.

Fast forward the fraudulence fighting to 2020. Over the course of that year, I became more active on LinkedIn. Time and again, I would see a post about impostor syndrome from someone in my network. Additionally, in my informational interviews or Q&A sessions, people would share how they are battling it in their work or job search. It didn’t take long to notice that a day could not go by without having a conversation about trying to deal with impostor syndrome. It occurred to me that all the conversations that were about struggling with it in the tech industry focused on the problem, but very few people pointed to solutions.

I wanted people to have a single resource that they could turn to for the tips and tricks to overcome their own impostor syndrome and something that they could recommend to others who are also experiencing it. I became inclined to believe that providing a resource in response to this commonly shared experience was something that I was being called to do. To test the waters, I started to share more posts on LinkedIn about strategies to surmount it. In writing LinkedIn content, I took the risk and opportunity to be vulnerable and authentic in sharing my failures, not just my successes. LinkedIn is a platform that I’ve heard referred to as Facebook for professionals.

As it currently is, social media is a feeding ground for games of comparison and inauthentic displays of success. LinkedIn specifically is heavily used by job seekers and recruiters, which adds pressure to present your best self in a certain way. A common type of post is the I’m happy to announce post where people broadcast a new job, award, contract, or partnership. Scrolling through and seeing what feels like everyone else around you getting a job or new achievement can make you feel like an impostor.

Scrolling on LinkedIn might make you ask, Why not me too? You may start to see the hiccups in your journey as evidence that you’re a fraud. However, in sharing my failures on a site full of successes, I was able to help others see that making mistakes is a part of the learning process, not something to be ashamed of.

I knew that I was saying something important from the comments and messages I gained in response to my content. I received direct messages from several people saying that the tips around impostor syndrome were a timely message. My connections needed to hear my story to feel more empowered to take on their own. Professionals and students alike shared that my posts helped put words to their feelings. What I shared comforted them to know that they are not alone. They are relieved to know that they do not have to feel burdened to figure out how to get over it by themselves.

In fact, impostorism isn’t something to get over in the first place. To this day, Michelle Obama still feels like she has to overcompensate to prove something to others. However, working hard to redress for your self-doubt or just repeating affirmations to yourself to sweep over the internal questioning isn’t the answer to overcoming impostor syndrome.

Before I started writing this book, I had wanted it to be about overcoming impostor syndrome. Now however, I do not believe that there is a single answer to overcoming it because there is a plethora of things that contribute to it. Given that people of all backgrounds and experience levels go