Kirsty McHenry | The world is run by frauds
As a recent graduate, columnist Kirsty McHenry is all too aware of her own shortcomings. She tries to maintain the illusion, but as a result sometimes feels like an imposter. “As a student too I was suffocated by the sensation that I’d managed to unwittingly trick my way into a position I did not deserve.”
“Who am I fooling?”. It seems that, no matter how many columns I write, this same question remains. As soon as my fingers hit the keyboard, I can’t escape the thought that, in a university community overflowing with thousands of erudite voices and certified opinion-havers, there must be countless numbers who could say it better.
As a student too I was suffocated by the sensation that I’d managed to unwittingly trick my way into a position I did not deserve. Every essay or statement in class felt like an endeavour to cover up not just an absence of knowledge, but an utter lack of confidence in what I was saying. Even now as my skills have grown beyond those of a student, the grip this anxiety has on me has only tightened. What’s ironic, however, is that life since university has also brought with it the growing realisation that most people are attempting to pull off a similar scheme.
The world is run by frauds. All around us people with questionable credentials and limited expertise are more than willing to give their answer to life’s deepest and most complex dilemmas. Certainly, anyone who has ever had the experience of watching their boss struggle to send an email or serve a customer would agree that we are far from living in a meritocracy. So why is it then that when many of us eventually do find ourselves in positions of importance we feel as if we’ve orchestrated a cunning act of infiltration?
Fake it till you make it
The years directly following university are typically among the most competitive of our lives. During this time especially, it can start to seem that a concept like deservedness would be better left to the moral debates of the classroom. Whether in job interviews or academic applications (or even municipal elections) we have to be more prepared than ever to promote ourselves. If we want to get a foot in the door, then it seems that perhaps we should all be attempting to fake it till we make it. Although, the catch here is that there’s a limit to how good we can be at persuading others of our abilities when we are still yet to convince ourselves.
As someone who feels like I’m faking it on the daily, either at work or in my writing, I can affirm that there’s little comfort to be found in the delusion. Of course, hesitancy and self-scrutiny are not themselves inherently negative, but we must be careful not to let them hold us back to the point of paralysis. Otherwise we risk finding that the conversation has already moved on by the time we finally open our mouths to speak. Instead, I believe that – while I may have yet to personally find it – there must exist for all of us some middle ground between superfluous self-doubt and a rational understanding of our limitations.
When we feel like we’ve somehow managed to sneak into somewhere we don’t belong, it naturally seems wiser to hold our tongues lest anyone catch onto our deception. However, for us recent graduates in particular, now is not the time to undervalue ourselves. After all, anyone who doesn’t think much of their abilities is all the less likely to win the fight for a seat at the table. So, instead of faking it in hopes of one day finally making it, we have to brave the long process of learning to understand both the truth and fluidity of our limitations. And trust that we do, in fact, have something worth saying.
Kirsty McHenry studied Political Science at the UvA.
