I never attended MIT, nor any big name college, but I have first hand experience struggling with impostor syndrome that I had since leaving high school and never having failed at anything I set my mind to. It was immediately noticeable from the first university math lecture where I was amongst an entire class of people who grasped concepts I had never even come across at high school and struggled to understand - even though I had never struggled at anything before in my life. I'd coasted through high school and nery once had to apply myself at anything - except Phys Ed. which was more a toil of will power than enjoyment. The feeling lasted until probably 5 or so years ago (my early 30s) - in fact, it had been such a prominent part of my psyche during that part of my life that it hadn't crossed my mind that I'd moved on until just as I was reading this article.

Upon reflection, I think most of the feeling stemmed from my perception of how other people were handling themselves in a world I personally felt I was floundering in. They appeared to take everything in their stride, understanding everything while I understood nothing and spent many thousands of hours attempting to understand just to keep from failing academic life - forget trying to be top of my class as I was used to. Then I became a programmer, thinking that once I left university, I would be okay; at that point, I would have made it. But the feeling never went away as I continued to feel like I was floundering, while my peers appeared to breeze through concepts I had to work bloody hard to grasp. It took many years for it to dawn on me that I spent far too long looking at how other people looked like they were handling it and comparing it to the actual struggles I was having. This has been dubbed the Facebook effect, where everyone else appears to have such a great life because that's what they show the world and you compare that to the struggles you have just to find time to shower, forget looking perfect.

I have come to believe that impostor syndrome is a symptom of the lack of authenticity in society. Nobody is real with each other and that largely is the cause of our inability to gauge how deserving we are of the positions we hold. Behind closed doors, everyone is floundering in different aspects of their lives. Some areas of life come easily to some, while others remain a constant struggle their entire lives - but what they show you is a tiny snippet - the snippet they want to show you. As Baz Lurhman said in Sunscreen, "Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind, the race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself." It has only really been as I have come to see and understand this pervasive lack of authenticity in society that the impostor syndrome has gone away. I believe that eventually all people get there, they say that 40 is the age that you stop caring what other people think and start living for yourself. I think it goes deeper than this and isn't tied to an age. I think as soon as you hit the dawning realization that everything you see around you is no more than what those around you want to show you and that it's all a carefully sculpted illusion to make you believe what they want you to believe about them, their lives, their businesses etc. you will realize...

You are not an impostor. You are in the position you are in because someone sees or saw something in you that you haven't yet begun to see, understand or accept in yourself. They gave you the chance you asked for because they believed in you - even when you may not have believed in yourself. The impostor syndrome you are experiencing is an illusion. You may not understand that yet, you may not accept that yet, but trust me, as someone who spent a larger portion of my life battling it than not battling it, you will make it, you did deserve the chance you were given, you do deserve to be doing what you are doing. You are already what you are struggling to realize and you don't need to fake it until you make it. Have heart, everyone has struggles, everyone has failures, everyone has successes. Don't give in to your insecurities, they are the beliefs instilled in you by society's failure to you - they are all so busy faking it until they make it that it's leaving you comparing their fake with your reality.