It’s a busy time of year on many college campuses. Current students are getting ready for final exams season and trying to squeeze in as many social events and spring festivals as possible before the close of the semester. Seniors are preparing for graduation and the pending next phase of life. On the other end of the spectrum, the incoming class of 2021 recently received their admit letters and will be making their final campus visits to decide where they will enroll. This is the group that I want to spend a few moments thinking about now. They are on my mind because I often wonder what happens between those moments when bright, accomplished high school students of color are sorting through their stacks of acceptance letters, glowing with pride, and the morning that they are unable to get out of bed for their 9 o’clock freshman math lecture because they are questioning whether they even belong on campus.
In my student support work at Penn, and in my broader college completion talks and workshops, I can't count the number of times a student of color has said to me that they don't belong. I distinctly remember one advising session with a first-year student a few summers ago, before classes had even started, and the very first words from her mouth were "I am not supposed to be here." She whispered this to me in a rushed voice, as if she was finally able to confess this heavy secret to a fellow black person that she felt she could trust. As we talked through her feelings and perceptions, she added, “I’ve fooled all of these people into letting me into this school, but now that I’m here I will actually have to figure this thing out and no one really believes that I can do this. I don’t even believe it myself.”
That’s one story. There are too many others. Like the black high school students being questioned by white peers after it’s announced that the black student has been accepted into another great college. “What were your SAT scores? How did you get in there?” Or black students being told flat-out that they were only selected to fill a quota (which is not legal), through affirmative action (which, when it exists, benefits white people), or to play a sport (which is just not a logical argument. Take football for example. There are under 800 colleges with football teams, but over 3000 four-year colleges in total. So no, that black guy from your sociology class is not on the football team. Because you don’t have a football team). These inquisitions and false assumptions plant seeds for the phenomenon known as imposter syndrome, causing a person to question their credentials and abilities, even when they’ve had remarkable achievements. This can continue hindering people in grad school, in the office, at the lab, in the boardroom, and everywhere in between. Why did you get selected to be the teaching assistant or win that fellowship? Did you really earn that promotion? How did you get at the table? Are you good enough to be here? The questioning can come from outside and within, without any warning and with no easy answers.
But here’s the thing. College is hard, and presumably all the more difficult at the nation’s selective schools. Every student who sets foot on campus will be tested in numerous ways. Can you balance a tough schedule? Can you find activities that bring you joy and enhance your skills? Can you create a network of great friends and helpful mentors? Can you synthesize all of those readings into a strong essay? Can you remember which equations to use for which problems? Can you pull off this group project even though two of your group members aren’t responding to your texts? Can you do more work than you’ve ever had to do before (and make this happen without any sort of pre-established schedule for when you have to put in the appropriate amount of study hours)? This is just a sampling of the daily college grind. To win this game, students must push through, challenging themselves to rise to the task. This is the very nature of achievement; successfully confronting the problem in front of you, whatever that problem may be.
So since we’re talking about problem-solving and resilience and grit and grind and knowing how to balance many things, I would hope that my first generation students, my students of color, my LGBTQ+ students, my undocumented students, my students who didn’t have the best high school situations and my students whose families don’t have the most robust wealth portfolios understand their amazing power. When you are systematically marginalized in any way—and very likely in multiple ways—and you overcome, it means that you’ve addressed all of the standard things that everyone else must tackle and you've dealt with the extra things that were there specifically to hold you back. You handled the haters—the people and the systemic structures—to get your win.
When we look at imposter syndrome particularly in the context of racism, the issue is never about talent and intellect, but rather the denial of access and the maintenance of an unjust power structure. Think about this for a moment—while whites ridiculed enslaved Africans for being “dumb and lazy,” they also put numerous laws on the books to prevent blacks from being educated. The absurd caricatures and racial propaganda created a culture of hate and ignorance, along with self-doubt, but the legal structures of denial and the outright brutalization and terrorism experienced by black churches and schools reinforced systems of inequality and oppression, to which black self-empowerment rose up against. This history is essential.
About that student that I met with those few summers ago, who told me she didn’t belong—I explained to her that I was her assigned advisor, which meant that she was supposed to be here and that we had work to do. We discussed how she not only belonged, but was chosen, and the expectation was to use her many talents and experiences to enrich herself and the people around her. She had some setbacks, as all students do, and also created some stellar opportunities to travel, lead, learn and grow. She graduated from Penn and is paying it forward, helping the next person overcome their anxieties and foster a sense of connection and strength to tell their own story.
That’s the final point I want to leave you with. You must shape your own narrative. Know that just because not everyone may want you in the room, and not everyone may want to fully acknowledge your brilliance and your many hard-earned achievements, you are nobody’s imposter. You are, as the t-shirt says, your ancestors’ wildest dreams, and the exceptionally qualified change that the haters may not be ready for. That’s their problem, not yours.
