By Oishee Misra
Organic chemistry is no easy feat. It’s even less easy when you’re in a highly competitive college class with over 400 students. Yet when MVHS Science Department Lead and AVID Coordinator Pooya Hajjarian received the fifth highest score in this course during his time in college, he wasn’t elated. Instead, he wondered if the professor had made a mistake, or if the test had just been easy.
Imposter syndrome — persistent feelings of inadequacy and chronic self-doubt — have characterized all stages of Hajjarian’s life, whether it be during his high school, college and even professional career. He mentions that even when he was named AVID coordinator or department head at MVHS, he questioned whether the decision makers were mistaken about his capabilities.
Junior Akshat Rohatgi feels similarly about the prevalence of imposter syndrome in his life, and explains that for him, imposter syndrome is closely tied to self-doubt. He experiences it when his self-expectations are set at an unreasonable height.
“[Imposter syndrome] keeps making you strive for more even if you are working at a satisfactory level,” Rohatgi said. “That still makes you feel like you’re not working hard enough or that your results aren’t good enough.”
Likewise, junior Janya Budaraju says she has experienced imposter syndrome almost constantly. As an intended Computer Science major, she explains that while taking AP CS A last year, she found that walking into a CS classroom and being faced with a sea of people who were nothing like her was intimidating.
“I want to pursue a career in technology and I get that it’s a field that I’m never going to feel completely at home in,” Budaraju said. “But I think it’s really unfortunate that, you know, I feel like I don’t belong in a field even though I’m probably just as qualified as anyone else in it.”
Budaraju mentions that imposter syndrome was especially pervasive during a university internship she did over this past summer.
“It was a general feeling, and I think it especially came out when I was asked to code an app or something that was a little bit outside of the area that I was comfortable with, and something that I hadn’t learned yet,” Budaraju said. “Although I took the steps to learn it and figure it out, I always felt like I should’ve already known it and that I didn’t belong because I wasn’t already totally proficient in the area.”
Rohatgi says he has experienced imposter syndrome outside of school as well. For instance, he used to do karate when he was younger, and often found himself comparing himself to others. Although it did make him a stronger person and fighter, Rohatgi regrets tainting his karate experience with feelings of inferiority.
“Many times I’d find myself comparing myself to others who were clearly ranks above me, they had many more years on me, and in this way it kind of felt like no matter what I was doing, it wasn't adequate enough,” Rohatgi said. “But oftentimes, I overlooked the fact that they had more experience, they had more time, and there were just more factors that made them better or more suitable.”
As a former MVHS student, Hajjarian has memories of believing he wasn't necessarily as smart as his peers. As a current MVHS teacher, he notices a lot of his students also seem to feel the same way. This feeling stems from their belief that everyone around them is more competent, smart and overall better than they are.
Rohatgi also cites MVHS culture as a contributing factor to this problem, believing that nearly everyone at MVHS is an overachiever. As a result, people often think that they don’t do enough despite doing everything they are capable of.
Budaraju agrees, and also mentions that MVHS is not at all representative of the general population in America, a factor that many students tend to neglect. She also believes that MVHS students tend to be very vocal about their abilities, contributing to an environment where they are constantly plagued with feelings of inadequacy.
Additionally, Budaraju feels that on a lot of levels, she is trapped in a lose-lose situation with high expectations from all directions — parents, students and societal stereotypes in general.
“As a girl, I feel like I’m underestimated and people assume that I’m less intelligent than I actually am in a technology setting,” Budaraju said. “But on the other hand, the model minority myth means that I feel like I’m always expected to be better than I am because of my race, that I’m expected to be super intelligent and that maybe I’m not impressive enough for my identity.”
Hajjarian adds that the notion of imposter syndrome being perpetuated solely by MVHS culture is an incorrect oversimplification. He believes that the cause of this problem stems from many different aspects of life.
“I think it’s so easy for us to point fingers,” Hajjarian said. “For me to be like, ‘Well it’s the parents,’ because they could be like, ‘It’s the teachers,’ we could say, ‘It’s their peers.’ It’s a combination – an overall culture problem. And I don’t think it’s just at MVHS, I think it’s at any high-performing school.”
It is relatively easy to identify the factors of imposter syndrome, yet Budaraju finds that combatting it is significantly harder. Since it is a subconscious feeling most of the time, she feels that when students try to recognize and vocalize it, they admit to themselves that they aren’t good enough to be in that space — a fearful thought for most students — which leads to a reluctance about imposter syndrome discourse with teachers.
“It’s just kind of scary to go up to someone who’s in charge and tell them you don’t feel like you belong in their class,” Budaraju said. “It’s probably scary for a teacher to hear as well, that their class isn’t always a comfortable environment for their students. I think on both sides there’s just this discomfort around acknowledging it in general.”
Rohatgi also mentions that some of his teachers have acknowledged imposter syndrome before, whether it be explicitly or implicitly.
“Although they almost never explicitly state it, [teachers] definitely do make an effort of pushing the point that everyone has their own capabilities, they have their own limits, they are good at their own thing,” Rohatgi said. “All my teachers to an extent have tried to help me and my classmates realize that.”
Hajjarian says that he personally has talked about this to his classes, and has had students come up to him and admit that they are feeling imposter syndrome. In order to support them, he usually has a conversation with them and walks them through why that it isn’t the reality or the reality that he sees for them. However, he does think that these conversations and his two minutes spiels to his classes are, for the most part, not very effective. Instead, he believes that there should actually be a lesson plan built around addressing this problem.
In order to cope with this in his personal life, Hajjarian falls back on his close friends to provide support. Whenever he feels conflicted about whether he deserved something or whether he simply got lucky, he talks to them for reassurance.
“I recognize it and then I’ll go to my friends who know me really well,” Hajjarian said. “Most of the time they’re like, ‘That’s not how you should be feeling about it,’ or like you know, ‘That’s not true, that’s just how you’re feeling on the inside.’ So I surround myself with people who can be real with me.”
Hajjarian feels like he can’t necessarily provide good advice to his students — considering how he feels like he has never dealt with imposter syndrome well himself — but he does make an effort to reinforce the idea that each student has more worth than what they sometimes might believe.
“I remind them that it’s a part of life to have setbacks – to fall down a lot,” Hajjarian said. “I think students see it as, especially in a competitive environment like MVHS, others seem to be doing just fine, but the reality is most of us need help. And I’m just reminding them that it’s okay to need help, it’s okay to sometimes feel like you’re not getting it on your own.”
According to Budaraju, imposter syndrome is difficult to deal with, especially when students are constantly comparing themselves to the people around them. However, recognition and resilience are ways through which students, including herself, can learn to dissolve this feeling of inadequacy, even if just temporarily.
“I think it’s important to remember that you worked hard to get to where you are right now, and you are not less deserving than other people for any reason, really,” Budaraju said. “I think you should celebrate your accomplishments for what they are, and not what they are in context of other people.”