College has given me many things, one of which is a chronic disease. Not one that can be diagnosed or treated with medication, but one that quietly influences how you see yourself: impostor syndrome.
For many of us, impostor syndrome didn’t begin in college, but it became impossible to ignore once we arrived on campus. For example, when I opened my acceptance letter to Hopkins, it was proof that the voices limiting me were never correct. If we struggled with self-doubt, that acceptance letter was our validation that we not only deserved it, but earned it. At least, that’s what I believed at the time. However, as my first year at Hopkins came to an end, the validation I had gained through receiving that letter started to feel less like proof and more like a mistake waiting to be exposed.
Being surrounded by some of the world’s smartest students, I assumed I was the least of them. People say impostor syndrome freshman year is normal, but what they don’t talk about is what it feels like to become the disease and let it start shaping every aspect of yourself. From inside and outside of the classroom, it followed me into conversations, introductions and the way I carried myself, as if there was something I had to prove before I could exist in the space. Impostor syndrome was no longer a temporary condition of freshman year, but a chronic mentality that surpassed every feeling of accomplishment. When my professors addressed the class and said, “You’re all Hopkins students, I know you’re smart,” I assumed they were speaking to everyone but me. When I had something to say during class discussion, I would rehearse it in my head until the moment passed, convinced that whatever I added would only confirm what I already suspected: that I didn’t belong in the conversation. I waited four years for the impostor syndrome to pass, and in truth, it never did.
Over time, that doubt stopped being something I felt and started becoming something I believed. I slowly started to accept that maybe I would always be reduced to a certain impression that those who did not know me well saw. Maybe I was too quiet in class, which meant I had nothing valuable or insightful to offer. Maybe it was my style, which meant that everything meaningful about me could not surpass the superficial. Or maybe it was being a minority, which meant that there would never be a place for me in the room I wanted to be in.
At Hopkins, everyone is smart until proven otherwise. Somewhere within that narrative, I have always found myself to be the exception. I believed I was unintelligent until proven otherwise. As the past four years went by, I discovered I was not a special case. Many of us convinced ourselves we were the exception, and many of us are still waiting for the day that feeling goes away. But impostor syndrome is not something we can graduate from. In fact, it might be something we continue to carry with our degrees, ambitions and our quiet suspicion that somehow we’ve fooled everyone. I thought if I got good grades or the best internship, or stacked my resume, it would go away. I thought that college would cure me of the disease it had given me.
Now I realize that maybe the lesson of college isn’t curing it, but instead learning to question it. Because the voice that tells us we don’t belong doesn’t disappear when we leave, it just follows us into new rooms, new opportunities, new beginnings. And maybe the point isn’t to silence that voice completely, but to stop believing it.
Somewhere along the way, without realizing it, I did prove something. I proved that I was strong enough to not only withstand the many negative ideas that can begin to manifest in new environments, but also challenge them. I spoke in rooms I once felt unworthy to enter. I sought out new experiences and studied not only in Baltimore but also in Morocco and D.C. I created spaces for the version of myself who once felt lost and overwhelmed. I became, in small ways, what I had once needed.
The voice is still there. It still shows up in unfamiliar rooms and new challenges, but it no longer has the same authority. It no longer gets the final say. And maybe that’s what it means to move forward: not leaving the doubt behind, but learning that it was never telling the truth in the first place. As we graduate, we may still carry that uncertainty with us. But we also carry four years of proof. Proof that we showed up, stayed and grew into the very spaces we thought we didn’t deserve.
And maybe that’s enough to start believing that we were never impostors to begin with.
Kylah Chacko is graduating with a degree in International Studies and History from Leawood, Kan.
