“What if I just got lucky?”
It’s the question that lives in the hearts and minds of every person struggling with impostor syndrome. Along with,
“Next time, I’ll fail and then everyone will know I’m not clever after all.”
When a person is living with impostor syndrome, they are emotionally incapable of internalizing their accomplishments as real and deserved. They fear that their achievements are the result of some beneficial twist of fate, when in reality they are the fruits of talent and effort.
In the worst case, it’s a crippling fear of being found out that turns into a pathological avoidance of the spotlight. (I’m talking about something beyond the normal amount of self-doubt everyone struggles with at some point in their lives).
The impostor syndrome phenomenon is typically associated with women, and for understandable reasons. Many women live with a lack of large-scale support for their efforts, along with a fundamental mistrust of their motivations. They are told that they are too emotional or irrational. One need only to turn to history (or more conveniently, the A Mighty Girl Facebook page) and read about the countless women whose historical contributions have been forgotten or mis-ascribed.
Just recently, I began to connect impostor syndrome with my students’ avoidance of challenging educational experiences. Honestly, their avoidance is the product of numerous social-emotional challenges, but I rarely hear anyone discussing how impostor syndrome might be a contributing factor.
A little while back, I presented a webinar for SENG titled “The Unique Challenge of Being a Gifted Woman.” While preparing for that event, I spent a lot of time cogitating on my own life as a twice-exceptional woman and my avoidance of challenge. I realized that when I have struggled with impostor syndrome, it wasn’t only due to the fact that I’m a woman.
It’s also because I have achieved great things in hands-on project-based settings, like a laboratory or a workshop, only to have my self-image torn apart during a timed test or otherwise judged for my inability to produce memorized information on demand.
As a young woman I thought this meant I was stupid, when what’s actually stupid is taking bright children and forcing them to demonstrate knowledge under terms that benefit only one type of learner. It’s a waste of time, a waste of resources, and a waste of abilities.
Not all is lost. I’m cheered that through the work of homeschoolers, micro-schools, and other alternative learning centers, children are learning that their worth isn’t as measurable and finite as a letter on a test.
Together, we’re combatting impostor syndrome. We’re showing these kids that the future needs problem solvers and innovators, that their divergent thoughts can lead to just as much success as an “A” on a math test.
This is a truth that I’m only now beginning to fully internalize. I’m glad my students won’t have to wait that long.
Let me know what tips and tricks have helped you overcome impostor syndrome.
An important topic, Jade. There’s a pretty good book I’d recommend called “The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women” by Valerie Young.
Thank you, Paula! I’ll check that one out.
I quite enjoyed that book as well, especially the guidance in recognizing and re-routing mental habits around success. (“If I don’t get it on the first try, I must not be smart” changing to “I value the experience I gain by trying new activities, even when they’re difficult for me.”)
Love this. If you find ten dollars, you are lucky. If you have a hugely positive impact professionally and personally, that is a result of long-term effort (backed by cleverness). Still, once you address impostor syndrome, does your relationship to luck change?
My experience in my own life and in years of working in a subject-based program for gifted learners indicates a person who has encountered a real challenge—something he or she cannot master easily or perhaps at all, initially—and failure, then worked past it thereby frees herself/ himself of “luck” forever. It will take repetition of this experience, of course, and that is why the person needs to be in the company of his or own real peers, not in some pull-out school program. The student needs to see that “D” or “F” or “C” on a paper more than once and then survive it to again do good work. This is not something that happens to women alone by any means. It grows out of never having had to do work appropriate to a person’s ability level, work that is consequently easy to the higher ability student. While the average student has considerable homework, the gifted student wipes that same homework out in class or on the way home frequently. He will not be able to do that with work that requires him to think at an appropriate level. Learning one can fail and then analyze why and pick himself up to succeed is the lesson our brightest students, the sources of innovation in our society, seldom get to learn in American education. Nor do they learn perseverance, for they have never had to persevere. Appropriate challenge, failure, and a teacher who is also gifted intellectually and understands the experience and can guide students are what gifted students need to become self-confident, independent, and daring/innovative. The regular classroom does not reward innovation or nurture creativity. When I say “failure,” I do not mean failing a course, but failing at tasks along the way—working very hard, but not being able to solve the problem, write the critical paper, apply principles.
When I set up the program in which I later worked, we did a sort of dry run—3 hours a week, with 5th-6th graders. At that time I hadn’t taught anyone south of a junior, senior, or graduate school in college. So I paid a lot of attention to the students. The things I heard again and again were these things: “I can be myself in this class. Nobody laughs when I ask a question. I love the way we have deep discussions (that student referred to my teaching the class to analyze a parable by setting it up like an equation). I feel normal because people are like me here and don’t laugh at me for being smart.” In other words, those students had realized they were normal and did not have to act dumb to fit in; when they encountered work that challenged them, it gave them joy and led them to other discoveries. They discovered themselves and their abilities. And that changed them forever, I think.
HAHA! I imagine the relationship to luck becomes more joyful for the person who is able to control their impostor thoughts. Nice question. 🙂
THIS was my greatest struggle while teaching. I always struggled to understand why people thought memorizing arbitrary information demonstrated genuine learning. Trying to convince others of this was a fruitless endeavor and created animosity towards my questioning of the system.
“It’s also because I have achieved great things in hands-on project-based settings, like a laboratory or a workshop, only to have my self-image torn apart during a timed test or otherwise judged for my inability to produce memorized information on demand.
“As a young woman I thought this meant I was stupid, when what’s actually stupid is taking bright children and forcing them to demonstrate knowledge under terms that benefit only one type of learner. It’s a waste of time, a waste of resources, and a waste of abilities.”
Thank you for your comment. I imagine if we had been working at the same school we would’ve been allies. 🙂
Right, it seems as if the “system” isn’t serving anybody, anymore. I’m glad you enjoyed the post.
While I’m not sure of the “syndrome” involved, I am absolutely sure of this: no one gains confidence in his ability to master new knowledge until he has failed at something that was appropriate to his intellectual ability. Typically academically gifted children do not encounter real challenges. They are presented problems and work that in no way challenges them. The result may be seen in a statistic that showed high school valedictorians performed more poorly and proved less creative and productive in college and the years immediately following college graduation. Typically these kids have been asked to memorize, to work at inappropriately difficult levels. Never having had the privilege of failing and thus learning that the world goes right on turning and life continues, without anyone really caring much about a failed test or challenge, they never have the chance to learn they are highly intelligent. They assume it is because they work harder or magic or something, and so they do not feel confident they can succeed consistently. The average student who has had to struggle to master educational materials and who has failed a few times comes thereby to understand what he can do, to learn to persevere. He learns that failure is only a temporary condition. So he takes that self-knowledge and the pride of succeeding at something really difficult with him into college and life. He won’t have to take the A-giving profs or the easy courses. He will know how to pick himself up and get back on the track. Every student deserves this opportunity, and academically children don’t get it generally. Until they work with a real peer group, with materials and tasks that challenge them to the point of occasional failure, they will continue to think they just have not been “found out” yet. I had the privilege to spend 25 years working in subject-based courses with gifted learners. I saw the value of appropriately rigorous materials, of failures, and of being in a group of similar people. They learned they were “normal,” they stopped faking ignorance, they developed great confidence, and they achieved at a level gifted students at the school had never achieved. Parents should demand more than once-a-week sessions with a “gifted” specialist. Their children deserve to know themselves and to achieve to the level of their potential. I was in graduate school before I encountered this, and it made all the difference.
Thanks for your comment, Gaye!
There is a huge difference between the typically gifted kid and a Twice Exceptional kid. While it may be true that “Typically academically gifted children do not encounter real challenges. They are presented problems and work that in no way challenges them,” this is not true for a Twice Exceptional kid. A 2E kid faces challenges every single day, which are then compounded when they hear how easy something is for a typically gifted peer. It is this that leads to the “imposter” syndrome – what if I’m not really gifted? What if it’s so hard for me because I’m really not as smart as they thought I was? What if I just got “lucky” on that test, and I don’t really belong here? 2E kids need extra help to understand that they ARE smart, but their brain is functioning differently, so things might be harder for them than for their peers.
My son, who is dysgraphic/dyslexic, experiences this feeling frequently. He has fantastic creative thinking and reasoning skills, but due to his disability, he struggles to put his thoughts into words on paper. This leads to very childish, low level responses, which leads to him feeling stupid. Teachers need to be flexible, and allow students to demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of ways, not just a one-size-fits-all type of response.
Kelly, you hit it in a nutshell. I’m a 62 male with the dynamics you describe. I had no idea until being first tested at age 52. I have struggled to find help and support as the fundamentals of the situation aren’t understood and our cultural styles exacerbate my difficulties.