Latinitas Reports from SXSW 2017
We have all done it before: looking around and thinking that we’re not as smart or as capable as everyone else in the room. Firmly believing that we don’t belong, or that we don’t deserve to speak up during a conversation. Feeling like a fraud, and that someone will call us out for our shortcomings.
Impostor syndrome has been a popular topic at SXSW this year, especially in panels concerning diversity in film and technology.
The term is defined by the Caltech Student Counseling Center as “a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true.” Coined by Dr. P. R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne Imes in 1978, this phenomenon is said to be prevalent among students and people who work in high stress jobs that feel like too much is expected of them. While anyone could experience impostor syndrome, research shows that it is most prevalent among women and racial minorities.
I heard this term on my first day of SXSW panels at the Leveraging Film and Entertainment to Advance STEAM panel on March 11. The topic of the panel led the discussion towards the success of the critically acclaimed film “Hidden Figures,” and later towards the high achieving people of color whose stories have been omitted from history.
It was then that Dr. Knatokie Ford told a personal story about attending Harvard to earn her doctoral degree and feeling out of place. After attending Clark Atlanta University (a historically black college and university, or HBCU) for her BS/MS in Chemistry, Dr. Ford felt the drastic change in demographics and suddenly felt inept in academia. It was this self-consciousness that eventually led her to quit the program.
Her fellow panelist, Dr. Kamau Bobb, shared a similar story, as he recalled comparing himself to his Asian classmates in his mechanical engineering classes and feeling inadequate at school. Both Dr. Ford and Dr. Bobb explained feeling like their universities had made a mistake in admitting them into their programs because they felt so unprepared and inferior.
Dr. Ford’s solution for this toxic mentality? Stop comparing yourself to others.
“The minute you stop comparing yourself to others and start comparing yourself to where you were a year ago, you will feel better.”
The topic of impostor syndrome came up again at the March 13 reading of the upcoming book, “Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking up Tech,” by Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens. At Geek Girl Rising: Making Room for Women in Tech, the authors read passages from the book featuring women who had experienced feelings of inadequacy in their computer science classes. Although we did not hear the end of the stories or how the women overcame those adversities, the book promises to be an interesting read for those who have ever felt inadequate academically or professionally based on their personal identity.
Fear of failure is an emotion many of us feel when we are in a competitive environment with high expectations, and this feeling can become more prominent when we look around and we don’t look like everyone else.
So, next time you’re the only representative of your gender or ethnicity in a room, remember to keep looking ahead instead of around. We are in our academic programs and/or professional environments because we have worked hard to get there and we deserve just as much recognition for that accomplishment as the people sitting next to us.
About the Writer
Ilse Garcia Romero is Latinitas’ Public Relations and Community Engagement Intern. She is a Media Studies graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, with a minor in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. Learn more about Ilse here.