Thoughts about Being an Impostor
Tags: career, speaking, womenintech, techtalks
Published: 2021-01-31 16:51:37

I had a plan to write a blog post about preparing for my first live coding presentation I'll give in about a week. Maybe ask some advice, perhaps ponder over some options.  I started writing, but all I had in mind was this colossal fear caused by impostor syndrome.

I saw a post on LinkedIn where someone had posted that they're excited about the talk. My instant thoughts were something like, "Why would they ever come to listen to me? What do I have to give?". They even had used words like "Someone wise codes something." Heck, I'm not wise. Why do they think like that?

Impostor syndrome is a real thing. In estimation, about 70% of people encounter at least one impostor syndrome episode in their lives. I've had many. One thing that might help to get over the feeling of being an impostor is to observe and talk about the thoughts. This blog post is a way to do that, and I hope you'll also get something out of it. 

## Some Background

The event, where I'll do the live coding, is a webinar for [Mimmit Koodaa][1], a Finnish initiative to get more women into the software industry. They have organized workshops with different companies before the pandemic, but now all the events are online, naturally. 

The result of a one-hour live coding session will be a small app that shows data about asteroids passing Earth. The API I'm using for the app is [NASA's Asteroids - NeoWs- API][2]. The tech stack consists of NextJS, Apollo Client (Yes, I'll be using the REST-link), and Typescript. 

I've been preparing for the event, which is on the 5th of February. One thing I'm pretty proud of is the loading indicator I've created for the app. I have a habit of diving into these irrelevant details when making demos, and it happened again. Here you can see it in action (the gif seems to be a bit slow, it moves a little bit faster in reality):

<img src="https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/uou37s1keuww3udn81wb.gif" alt="A drawn asteroid, which moves slowly up and down. Animation of lines after it indicate that it is moving" style="height: 100px;" />

If you want to see the code, here's the Github repository:

{% github eevajonnapanula/asteroid-loading-spinner no-readme %}

I also published it as an [NPM-package][4] (my first one ever! 🥳).

## I Feel Like an Impostor 

So, as mentioned in the intro of this post, I read a LinkedIn-post about someone being excited about the event. There were some tweets too, and I just felt like... why? Why do they get so excited about the event? It's just me coding there.

Oh, by the way: I know this is how I feel, not how I am. I acknowledge I am a very competent developer, but as many of us have experienced, imposter syndrome makes one question if they know anything.

When I suggested the live coding session to Milja, the program coordinator, I unconsciously thought that no-one would be there. Even if Milja was super thrilled about the idea,  I still didn't presume that anyone else would. Having this thought in the back of my brain, the fact that people are *actually* interested in me coding live took me by surprise.

Honestly, it will be me googling "JavaScript Rounding" when I don't remember the syntax and then feeling a bit ridiculous when it was something as simple as `Math.round`. (This happened to me when I was preparing for the event)

## That's What I Would Have Needed!

Then it hit me. That's something I never had when I was learning to code. There wasn't anyone who looked even remotely like me (meaning, for example, gender) who was coding. Well, I didn't really have anyone to look up to, as I was living in a town with no cool meetup culture or other events. I was also too scared to join any online communities.

I recognize that my background has some factors that make the feeling of being a fraud more likely. I am a woman working as a specialist, which is one significant factor (even though these feelings can occur to anyone!).  I'm not going into details, but I find myself from the characters and family situations that can lead to impostor syndrome Jaruwan Sakulku and James Alexander [present in their article][5]. 

I also realized that those "me googling how to round in JavaScript" are essential things to see. The myth of an all-knowing developer is something many beginners believe in when the truth is that most of us search for the syntax of simple things. 

It is scary to put yourself out there, especially when everything you do gets recorded and shared publicly afterwards. Anyone can watch the recording and find some mistakes. They might not be so supportive and fantastic as the communities around me are. 

I'm still doing it.

## Wrapping up

Impostor syndrome can make us all question ourselves and believe that we are not enough. The first step to overcome it is to observe and talk about your thoughts - you'll be surprised how many can relate to your feelings! 

And oh, for those who understand Finnish and would like to know more about the live coding event, or even watch, [here's the link to the event page][3].

Have you ever felt like you are an impostor? What has helped you?

## Resources
- [Sakulku, J. (1). The Impostor Phenomenon. The Journal of Behavioral Science, 6(1), 75-97.][5]

*Cover photo by [Patrick Schöpflin][7] on [Unsplash][8]*

[1]: https://mimmitkoodaa.ohjelmistoebusiness.fi/in-english/
[2]: https://api.nasa.gov/
[3]: https://mimmitkoodaa.ohjelmistoebusiness.fi/workshopit/livekoodausta
[4]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/asteroid-loading-spinner
[5]: https://so06.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/IJBS/article/view/521
[6]: https://time.com/5312483/how-to-deal-with-impostor-syndrome/
[7]: https://unsplash.com/@patrickschoepflin
[8]: https://unsplash.com