(Cross-posted in one part on Codify Academy's online learning platform.)
Hands-down, the most common and most paralyzing issue which all – literally all – of our grads face after completing the program is impostor syndrome. If you’re not sure what impostor syndrome is, it’s a condition in which you feel like an absolute fraud, constantly on the verge of being discovered for your fraud-like ways and fraud-like non-skills.
Impostor syndrome is not at all unique to coding or even to graduates of coding programs like Codify’s, but it’s easy to understand why our students grapple with it. They’re often individuals who sixteen weeks prior had never even touched code before, and now they’re touting themselves as front-end developers hunting for in-demand jobs. In that position, it can be extraordinarily difficult to see how you can compete with computer science degree-holders or statisticians or data-scientists from well-known universities, or industry thought leaders who just seem so much more in-the-know, or men and women who seem like they caught on to coding while in the womb.
The reality, however, is that every single individual in any kind of skilled job or high-stakes career has grappled with impostor syndrome at some point in their lives. Doctors rely on years and years of schooling to learn the skills they need to be licensed medical professionals, but how can you possibly feel like anything but an impostor the first time you treat a patient on their own – a very real, very human patient, possibly with a very real medical emergency, who looks to YOU for the answers, who looks to YOU as the expert, who trusts YOU to save their life. Even after all those years of higher education, can anyone feel so prepared that they never feel like an impostor the first time they get thrown into the deep end?
They suffer from impostor syndrome because we all suffer from impostor syndrome. We all feel it, we all fight it, we all work through it. Everything seems impossible until we’ve done it.
And that’s the point! Yes, our students don’t get years and years of education, and they don’t require licensing in order to practice their craft, but THAT’S not why they suffer impostor syndrome. That’s not why they run the risk of convincing themselves “I shouldn’t be here, I can’t do this, I don’t know what I was thinking” while at their first interview, or while scanning job boards.
They suffer from impostor syndrome because we all suffer from impostor syndrome. We all feel it, we all fight it, we all work through it. Everything seems impossible until we’ve done it.
With the right mentorship, the right time investment, and the right attitude, the leaps and bounds which one can make over a short period of time in a field like coding are astounding; but all else being equal, Codify students will all, always, suffer from a keen sense of impostor syndrome, until one day they don’t.
By pushing forward, by reflecting on what you accomplish instead of simply how you measure up short, by realizing that no one is perfect and no one begins anything as an expert, and by being dedicated to changing your thinking on how you perceive yourself, that impostor syndrome will melt away. That first interview that you ace, or that first tech meet-up where you feel like you fit right in, that first day on the job (maybe second or third!), that first Vue app or React dashboard. Something, somewhere, sometime soon will open you up to the possibility that-
“Yes, maybe I can do this; maybe I do belong here; maybe this was the right choice, after all.”
Then, once you’ve beaten impostor syndrome, just remember the struggle and remember how it made you feel small, so that when you’re sitting on the other side of the table interviewing a new job candidate or talking to a coding novice, you can put yourself in their shoes.
Add comment