Impostor Syndrome
I went to a workshop by Dr. Valerie Young on Impostor Syndrome, a behavior pattern in which high-achieving individuals (particularly women and academics!) have a hard time believing in their own success and intelligence. Dr. Young asked a room full of highly-talented women to write down their fears about graduate school, research, and work. Every single woman’s list looked something like this:
- saying something wrong
- not knowing the things I should know
- asking a question I should know the answer to already and showing I am stupid
- not coming up with original or interesting ideas in my research
- not being as smart as my other people in my group/class/subject
That is, every single woman but one– one row behind me sat one of the career counselors at my university. Her list looked quite different:
- not always being as nurturing as I know I can be
- not helping all of my clients to reach their full potential
- sometimes acting impatient or rude
Clearly she did not suffer from Impostor issues.
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Impostor Syndrome
Dr Shellie went to a workshop on Impostor Syndrome, which is “a behavior pattern in which high-achieving individuals (particularly women and academics!) have a hard time believing in their own success and intelligence”. As you’d expect, female acade…
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