Impostor Syndrome

[MysterE]

Hi all -

I was recently reading rather rapidly the newest 'How I Work' article posted by Spectrum and something caught my eye.

It definitely feels weird sometimes being an Elementary Art teacher in the FRC community where most everyone is not quite doing that at all. I used to jokingly following up most of the things I’d say at robotics to people with: “But what do I know, I’m just an elementary school art teacher”. But then I realized I know more than I give myself credit for when it comes to non technical related things, and it took some time to really see the value of that.

It caught my eye because its something that I've dealt with a lot through my own life. Its called Impostor Syndrome. According to the source of all human knowledge, Wikipedia,

Impostor syndrome (also spelled imposter syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome) is a term coined in the 1970s by psychologists and researchers to informally describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those exhibiting the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

As a Social Studies teacher turned Robotics Coach, I spent the first number of years advocating against my experience as both a leader and a coach of such a technical team. Sure - I could offer help in fundraising, writing chairman's awards, and counseling the myriad of weeping students that generally find their way to my door mid build-season, but it took me a long time to feel that I had the right to even call myself a coach, much less the coach of an FRC team. So when questions about design came up: "I'm not a designer," or programming: "I'm not a programmer." This all regardless of the fact that I've programmed before and have definitely designed some pretty amazing Lego castles.

Expanding this further - I often find that when we first get mentors through the door to help our team, the first thing that they have to conquer is this feeling of inadequacy for the task. This is true even if they are employed engineers. Why? I'm not quite sure. I think it may due in part to the completely new environment of building something from scratch. Our students have the same issue.

So with this in mind, how do you (if you do) deal with impostor syndrome in your team or in yourself. How do you internalize your accomplishments and use them to motivate you to greater feats?

Or - what are some times when you've felt like the impostor? What did you do? How did it affect you?


Just curious.

-D

[Rosiebotboss]

Fake it until you make it.

That's what I feel like on occasion. Then I look at my resume, which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/q8tcot9

Then I look at the kids that have come through my program. Engineers, teachers, cooks, machinists, moms, PhDs, MDs, technicians (to name a few) and many are now returning to give back to the program that gave so much to them. To me, that trumps my lack of formal education, these kids have it in spades over me! (I admit it, I flunked Algebra II twice in HS).

Then, there's John. (The JTB in my CD signature) Search John Burns in CD.

Use your kids successes to motivate you.

[JamesBrown]

I first heard about Impostor Syndrome when having Lunch with a Researcher from MIT's Media Lab. He was a very good programmer, and a brilliant designer who explained that he always felt like an impostor, since his background was in art and here he was in the engineering world. I've started to feel the same way myself recently.

Over the last 3 years my career has really taken off. In my current position I find myself flying to customer sites and meeting with customers, often the youngest in the room by 20 years, but I am there as a subject matter expert. I wake up nearly every morning before these meetings stressed, and incredibly nervous that I am not going to be what the customers want or need, and that they will think I am a fraud, and that will then reflect poorly on the company I work for. I know that I know my stuff, and I know that I am a very capable engineer, but I can never get over these feelings that I am not the expert other people think I am, and that some day they will find that out, and it will collapse.

I can't say for sure how to deal with it, as it is something that I clearly haven't over come. I spend a lot of time having to convince myself that I am not where I am by accident. In these meetings, the thing that gets me over my nerves is just getting into the technical aspects, while it is the source of the stress, as soon as I am presenting and discussing, the stress goes away, the customer always receives it well, and I am in my comfort zone, at least until next time.

[Amanda Morrison]

Your thread really resonated with me. As both a student and a mentor, I've had many moments where I felt that I have little to offer in this program. I've never worked outside of an engineering/R&D environment, and with an English degree it's easy to feel lost. FIRST teams often focus so much on engineering lessons that I feel the lessons that resonated most with me as a student - teamwork, communication, creative development, enjoying what you do - are sometimes lost or undermined in the face of a nearly impossible 6-week task. I've discussed at length with others who mentor but also are not engineers - my friend Rich Kressly and I have shared many conversations on this topic over the years. It's a nagging feeling that is present in every engineering conversation in which I obviously cannot hold my own. To put it very nicely, feeling that way inhales audibly and it undermines self-confidence. I continue to stick with these programs, and in advocating and supporting robotics education in general, for two reasons -

1 - because I was influenced by a group of mentors who had varying backgrounds but were all effective communicators, and showed me that the camaraderie and relationships that made us an excellent team were just as important as the engineering and design lessons being taught to us. It's easy to forget that we're dealing with impressionable teenagers sometimes, and that there are really basic life lessons (how to treat others, how to properly resolve conflict, how to be a great teammate, etc.) that can be reinforced alongside the engineering fundamentals that they are being taught. I have to remind myself - I can do that.

2 - because of two great student experiences I've had. After grilling students for 8 hours on their awards submission essay, making them agonize over word choice and sentence structure and watching them realize why effective communication is perhaps the most important asset they can develop in their lives, a student confided that I had pushed them harder than any teacher they'd had and that they were better for it. That same year, I received an anonymous thank you note from a student who simply thanked me for always treating him/her like an equal when they didn't always feel that way. And here, I didn't do much... I just tried to teach them what I felt had been really important for me to learn in my own life.

That note still sits on my desk at home because sometimes I need reminding, too. I can be there for those fringe kids who, like me, were potentially not interested in a STEM career but still got a lot from being on the team. These robotics programs can still teach these kids extremely valuable lessons and set them on a successful path in life, regardless if they become engineers, artists, sailboat captains, lion tamers, or whatever tickles their fancy. They just need to be encouraged that they can be a successful [anything]!

At my job I work hard to be the best at what I am doing, almost to a neurotic level. I despise being ignorant about the topic at hand (regardless of what that topic may be), and as a result I've worked to grasp basic engineering terms and concepts by asking many questions. So many questions. Probably too many questions. I have been lucky to work with many people who have patiently explained complicated concepts that are definitely outside of the range of an English degree. I think I've learned more about physics from Paul Copioli mid-meetings than I retained from all of high school. I still often get the 'why the heck am I here?' feeling, but working to develop the self-confidence to admit when I'm lost has really diminished that. And furthermore, the result is that I have become/try to become a more valuable employee over time.

[GeeTwo]

I have certainly experienced the Imposter Syndrome from both sides. I have been declared an "expert" in several things within a week of first hearing about them. I have also worked with a number of people who try to deny expertise despite an overwhelming flood of evidence. There is a guy I work with who has at least three times the nominal expert "10,000 hour" level of experience in his field, but because he never received a bachelor's degree, does not feel an expert. But when we get people coming in with freshly-minted PhDs and MSs, guess who becomes their mentor for the next few years?

A key thing to remember (and I don't know who said it first, though I first read it in a slightly different form from Robert Heinlein) is that: "An expert is a person from out of town with a brief case." The bottom line is that if you know a subject well enough to answer the simple questions, and know whom to ask (and have a good enough relationship to get an answer) when a problem is beyond your ken, you may well be are a de facto expert in that subject. These days, an accomplished practitioner of google-fu who learns the language of several fields and builds up some reputation on a few web sites can be a functional expert of many things. Just last week I heard (not for the first time) that there is an IT guru in my (rather technical 700+ personnel) organization whose primary skill is typing error messages verbatim into Google, and knowing to wrap them in quotes.

And now, utterly cross-threading my previous discussion, but more applicable to FRC: Once someone is recognized as an "expert" by others, Impostor Syndrome is really just a minor character flaw that leaders need to understand and work around/with. The real problem for FRC is in recruiting mentors. The key tag line is "I don't know anything about robotics." The right answer (at least for 3946) is: "Of course you don't. None of our mentors has ever done robotics before starting with FRC. But you know how to ______, don't you? We need someone who can teach the kids something about that."
___ might be something technical like software programming, building to requirements, eliciting requirements, making a mechanical system that works, or machining a bearing block. It might also be something on the business side like "sell an idea to a customer"; "make a budget"; or "run a business", or it might be on the competition side like "prepare and execute game strategy" or "keep spirit high". The bottom line is to find what each prospective mentor can add to your team, and communicate that (and the real purpose of FIRST: to inspire STEM leaders) to each in a compelling way.

[Foster]

These are great posts.

Hi, my name is Foster and I'm an Imposter.

Back in the 1980's I worked for Burroughs the Computer Company. Behind me in my office was every Large Systems Manual from Algol through NEWP to Workflow Language. People would call and ask questions, I'd pull the book, flip through the pages, pull out the answer and pretty much read it back to them. An early version of "let me Google that for you".

But I often got sent to places because I was "the regional expert" because I had the manual and had read the manual (and yes, I remembered to take the manual with me!) So I was "An expert is a person from out of town with a brief case."

I've recruited lots of mentors with if you know "righty tighty - lefty loosey" and can button a shirt (*) we can teach you how to do robotics. Likewise for programing people "can you make Popcorn in the microwave without pressing the Popcorn button" we can teach them programming. (I try to avoid the eyeroll phrase "I can teach a middle school roboteer how to build a robot, you'll be much easier" )

Lots of times in FRC design meetings I'd go "Well I'm just the web guy but I think ..." and lots of times it was a good idea.

One of the smartest and best software debugger I know is a philosophy major. She's used to sitting and thinking about problems from different sides. I have a friend who is one of the top Operations Managers, he's a history major. He's used to looking at trends over time and can stay ahead of what's going on since he's keenly aware of the past.

I love people that when you ask "Can you do X?" they go "No, but I can learn!" The three biggest things I took away from College was the ability to research new (to me) things, the ability to present ideas to other people and the skill to debate (**) those ideas.

So it's good to be on the edge, it keeps people learning and thinking.

(*) I used to say "tie a tie", but with men's ties falling out of favor they couldn't. But their wives could and so we taught them.
(**) Debate both sides, but each person gets to speak, nothing like the "yell over the other person" like we have today

[MrRoboSteve]

Don't have time right now to write a long post like the other great posts in this thread, but will say that I've had the same feeling many times in my career.

JamesBrown: there's a secret stress reducing phrase that someone let me in on. Once I learned to say it comfortably in technical conversations, it made a big difference in my stress level. The phrase? "I don't know the answer to that question."

Example -- yesterday I got an IM from a fairly senior person at work, asking some technical questions. Was able to answer some, but the conversation ended with "I don't know the answer to that question, but here are a couple people you could go to who may be able to get you an answer." He left happy.