Your final year of university is a strange place – or at least it has been for me. I’ve always known what’s coming next and what I need to do to get there: school, GSCEs to A-Levels, applying to uni, and getting in, so these past four years have been a strange time of security stretching out into the unknown. I study philosophy – a subject I primarily picked because it didn’t tie me down to a specific end goal or narrow career path. But now, as I face the infinite possibilities and doubts of the unknown, all that comes to mind is, “I’m good enough.”
The dynamic in St Andrews is one of an intense detachment from reality. When you are constantly surrounded by intelligent, creative people, each with diverse experiences and backgrounds, what you inevitably think of as ‘normal’ shifts – both in what you expect from other people and the standards you set for yourself. While I may have been top of my class in the town I grew up in, I’ve struggled with feelings of inferiority every year I’ve studied in St Andrews. Either my work hasn’t felt good enough, or I am not part of as many societies or doing as many exciting internships as those around me, constantly and consistently feeding back to those common imposter syndrome symptoms: self-doubt, comparisons, negative self-talk, and a lack of confidence.
Yet, after conversations I have had with other students, it seems I am far from being alone in these feelings. In a university environment, such as St Andrews, where there are high expectations from students both in their studies and, more broadly, in extracurriculars or work experience opportunities, imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy can be incredibly isolating. If we’re being honest, it’s hard to tell someone that you got a bad mark on your essay or didn’t get an interview for that graduate role or summer internship you applied for. Fear of judgment and constant comparison to other students who, from your perspective, seem to effortlessly succeed while being part of five society committees and getting an internship every semester break can prevent anyone, me included, from talking about how hard they are struggling with feelings of inadequacy. However, the reality is often far from what your brain may be telling you – not ‘everyone’ is succeeding while you’re failing. Often, our own self-doubts and negative self-talk can cloud our perceptions of others, attaching almost entirely fictional lives and experience to the people around you, i.e., ‘everyone else feels so confident about what they are doing and always get good marks while I’m failing’ or ‘everyone else is more likely to get their dream job than I am.’ And the fact is that it’s just that – fiction, complete and utter fiction.
While we may never know what other people’s full stories are – maybe the person who seems to have it ‘all together’ does, or maybe inside, they are struggling with something you’ll never see. Either way, what other people are doing and how you perceive what they are doing doesn’t and shouldn’t need to affect how you think about your potential. There will always be someone who, on paper at least, may seem more experienced or intelligent or insert a trait about others that makes you feel insecure about yourself here, but that does not mean you are ‘not good enough.’ When this thought comes to mind, to challenge it, I’ve found myself asking ‘not good enough’ for whom? ‘Not good enough’ how? Usually, this boils back down to those traits I feel inadequate in compared to others; therefore, this is just another reminder that I need to step back and stop comparing.
However, one other thing I’ve found holding me back as I am about to apply to graduate jobs and internships is the fear of failure, the thought of ‘I am not good enough, and the fear of success. What if I do get that job? What if I jump straight into a career I don’t want because I am fueled by the fears generated from the comparison that some competitive aspect of me doesn’t want to ‘fall behind’? This thought of just ‘getting a job’ is certainly something I’ve struggled with due to having a non-career specific degree and an interest in many different career sectors, but also because another largely fictional ideal I am comparing myself to in my head is that everyone else is going to go right into their dream job and succeed. I don’t want to fall behind. While this isn’t the case, I think it is the driver for many students, such as one graduating from St Andrews, to apply to jobs they don’t want to do because at least it’s a job. While I hold no judgement against anyone who wants to start their career as soon as possible, I feel exhausted at the thought of slipping straight from constant years of education, where my path ahead has been clear every year. I knew what I needed to do next to get to where I wanted to go: straight into a job that I don’t trust myself to leave if I don’t enjoy because at least then I’m earning an income and on the career ladder. Taking a break to figure out what I want to do and give myself time to understand this is something I always ruled out when planning what would ‘come next’ after university, as I saw it almost as a failure.
While I am still unsure about what comes next for me and what I want, I would remind anyone else, as I try to remind myself as I look into the future after university, that decisions based on comparisons of what other people are doing are not always good. Let’s be honest. That old saying ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ certainly holds some truth. Yet, I would personally want to add the extra caveat that it may also be the thief of your potential and success if you keep letting insecurities and a sense of inadequacy hold you back because you don’t feel good enough or experienced enough or you need to do more compared to some imaginary ideal that you will never achieve. You are good enough, and you’ll figure it out. Believe in that.