Imposter Syndrome & Procrastination: Wrapping Up My Junior Year!

As my junior year comes to a wrap, I’ve been reflecting a lot on everything I’ve experienced over the past year. On things I’ve done, people I’ve met, goals I accomplished or failed – but mostly I keep going back to thinking about who I want to be, and how I want to be perceived by the world and by myself. I have a job, I go to school, I have a nice group of friends that bring me joy, and an incredibly supportive family. And yet most of the time I can’t help but perceive myself as a failure. I am unsure if this is a self-esteem issue, a deeper mental health issue, or if my self-sabotaging habits are simply getting the best of me once again – but I really struggle with being satisfied with what I have, or more accurately, with who I am. I live under the constant anxiety that people will discover that I’m just a fraud – I don’t truly feel as intelligent, as nice, or as beautiful as I present myself to believe. Although I put on an extremely confident façade, I am deeply insecure and feel incredibly flawed.

    As an exercise for myself to practice self-love and kindness, I wanted to go back and think from the start of the school year of all the things I was able to successfully do, that either brought me pride or joy. Sometimes we spend so much time criticizing ourselves and wasting time thinking about all the things we weren’t able to complete, and it takes an unproportioned weight in our lives. It’s insane the number of times I measured my self-worth off the things I didn’t do instead of the ones that I did, which doesn’t make sense. After all, you should be defined by the things you do, not the ones you don’t.

 If the argument for leaving your so-called shortcomings behind you hasn’t been made strong enough just by the “practice self-love” argument, then here’s another one for you: it’s an absolute waste of time. If you applied the time you’ve spent feeling bad for yourself over the things you weren’t able to complete into actually completing them or moving on to a different goal or task, you’d already be halfway through something else. That’s a relevant application of your time! For all my economics majors out there, time is a limited asset, so you should try to be as productive as possible with it in order to increase your efficiency and your output. You can only get out of tasks what you put into them – even if you are completely unmotivated, put in 15 minutes of your time one day, just commit to those 15 minutes and whatever extra time you put in is just a bonus. Starting is the hardest part for me personally, so just dedicate those first minutes to whatever activity I have to complete, and I promise that finishing the rest of it comes much easier.

Another very important piece of advice is that you should communicate about your struggles with the people around you. Talk to your Teaching Assistant, your professors, an academic advisor, or the Dean of your college. There’s no shame in asking for help; in fact, I think it takes extreme bravery to open up to people that for the most part are complete strangers. However uncomfortable this idea may seem to you, it could be helpful to you in your classes. In my personal experience, all instructors have been very kind and accommodating to personal issues I’ve experienced when I communicated with them early and consistently to keep them updated on my progress and needs. Leaving these conversations to happen during finals week only when you can’t see any alternatives and are spiraling into stress is a really bad idea. There is very little that instructors can do for you at the last minute, so communicate with them with plenty of time for them to take action to help you out.

My junior year taught me a lot about myself, about the world, and about what role I want to play in it. The first step towards actively building the future I want for myself is to recognize my shortcomings, learn from them, and move on. I can’t dwell on the past, the only productive thing to do is to learn from it and do a little bit better every day. Honda, the Japanese car maker, developed this concept in their company culture in the 80s and 90s that they should try to perform only 1% better every day. Objectively, 1% is very little, you can easily improve that much consistently. However, when we look at this growth compounded, we can see the long-term effects are enormous. That 1% of improvement is extremely worth it in the long run. So next time you are questioning yourself, procrastinating on that assignment, or just struggling to start something, think about how you can improve 1% that day: just start that project, and do a little bit of it. The 'you' of tomorrow will be thankful, and you’ll be one step closer to achieving your goals!

 

*** This is just an article with some coping mechanisms and reflections that I personally use. This does not substitute seeking professional help or speaking with an advisor or your instructors to inform them of how you’re struggling. You can find plenty of on-campus wellness and mental-health resources at https://wellness.ucsb.edu/ or by communicating with UCSB Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) https://caps.sa.ucsb.edu/services/overview-of-services.