Writerland is a newsletter from The Delacorte Review whose mission is to help writers tell the stories they need to tell.
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I got promoted at work recently and one of my first thoughts was “what if they only gave me this promotion because I’m a minority and they’re trying to have better diversity stats?”
I’ve had feelings like this my whole life. It’s part me being a very anxious person and always in my head, part being in spaces where people like me aren’t always present, part other people making me feel this way by saying things like “you’re so lucky to be there.”
No one is immune from feeling imposter syndrome. I’m sure most of us have felt inadequate or unworthy of our successes at some point. I personally think my imposter syndrome began as a six-year-old scholarship student at a private school on the Upper East Side. I often felt dreadfully out of place when I went to my classmates’ townhouses or birthday parties, when I saw how often their parents paid for private tutoring sessions and how little we knew about each others’ New York.
We’re all outsiders in some way, be it by race, gender, sexuality, religion, class or the hundreds of other things that isolate us from a majority. And while feeling “like you don’t belong” isn’t the same as imposter syndrome, for me, it led to feeling like I wasn’t worthy of my successes, like I didn’t earn them properly. I’ve been in many spaces where I’ve been told, mostly by white peers, that I am so lucky to be where I am, not that I am smart or talented. Every so often, I worry people think I am stupid, because they seem so surprised when I accomplish anything at all, regardless of how small it is. It feels like sometimes, perhaps because I am Latina and I am in spaces where there aren’t many of us, people have really low expectations for me.
When I did well in school I assumed it was because I worked hard, not because I was smart. In fact, I’ve only very recently come to accept the fact that I can be smart, at least in some things. When I got into colleges and graduate schools, got internships, job offers and now promotions, there has always been a part of me that worries I’m only getting these things because someone had to fill a diversity quota. I dismiss my talents and my worth and I worry that I’ll only let people down.
I’ve believed this in part because people have told me this throughout my life. There were the kids who made affirmative action jokes without even really knowing what it was, the college classmate who asked if I ever wondered if my teachers wanted to sleep with me because I kept getting A’s. And there was me, who, when I saw opportunities like scholarships and grants specifically for minorities, thought wow, I’ll apply to this because I know I have a better chance of getting this than I do at getting something that everyone can apply for. (I think these opportunities are great and very much needed today because of institutionalized racism, but in my mind, I was only thinking, my chances of standing out are higher when there are less people because I am unremarkable.)
I was taught to be grateful for the opportunities handed to me – something I think many children of immigrants can relate to. I carried that mindset into my professional working life, where I accepted less than ideal jobs and bad pay because at least I was getting offers and how lucky was I for that? In journalism especially, I feel like we’ve all been there because the jobs are so few and far between. The industry is cutthroat and it does a fantastic job at making you feel like you don’t belong because so few really “make it.”
Elite journalism spaces are strange. In grad school at Columbia Journalism School, I got the impression that many of us were insecure about our skills and futures in the field but tried to mask it in every way. The result was countless conversations of people going around in circles saying, “I did this,” and another saying, “well I did this which is slightly more impressive” and so on.
So many of us are putting on a show, myself included. I feel like I’m always trying to find the perfect balance of making sure people who ask how I’m doing know I'm doing well, but not too well in journalism. When I was really flunking the whole journalism thing, babysitting most of the time and not writing a thing, I mostly just told people I was freelancing in journalism and excited about it. And when I got promoted, I told my family and a handful of my friends. It wasn’t something I felt like sharing or posting about (except now I’m obviously doing so here.)
Feeling imposter syndrome makes it hard to celebrate your wins, however big or small. And that’s a shame because in this industry, it can be really hard to come across wins. Women especially are often shamed for self-promotion, for talking too much about themselves and their accomplishments. Lately, I’ve begun to allow myself to feel a little bit of cockiness. And I hate overconfidence, and I’m sure sometimes I come across as an absolute drag, but it is nice – and freeing – to say, you know what, I know a lot about this and I am smart at this!
I want to be clear that I’m not writing just to complain about imposter syndrome. I think it’s normal to feel like you don’t deserve your accomplishments sometimes, especially in a society that demands exceptionalism. I do however wish we all spoke about it more and I’m curious to see how my relationship to my accomplishments, or lack thereof, change as I get older.
I also don’t want to dismiss luck and chance. Yes, it irritates me to no end when people write off my accomplishments as me simply being lucky. But I have been lucky! There are so many instances where I was at the right place at the right time. A lot of my opportunities in journalism especially have come about because I met people who remembered me down the road. But that luck didn’t do my work for me. And that luck isn’t what makes me keep a job or write that article or learn something new. What any of us do with that luck is entirely up to you.
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Our newest story “A Black Women’s Search for Her Place in White, White Vermont” by Sheena Daree Romero comes with a new feature: Long Stories Short, videos in which our authors read sections from their stories. We hope you enjoy the story and also enjoy meeting and hearing Sheena.
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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture. Writerland, The Delacorte Review Newsletter comes out every other week. Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.
Articulate, lucid & polished piece.
So clear-headed and true, Natasha. I love your writing. And on imposter syndrome, it's a mind game for sure (I struggled for years w/ it), but I mean, no one can fake narrative writing (especially longform), it's far too hard! After a certain number of stories, I was like, "Welp, read THAT" to my own mind. So I'm starting to settle down at last.