Read The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It for Free Online

be able to do the same for yourself.
2. You Are a Student
    Since 1985 more than sixty colleges and universities have invited me to their campuses to speak. Occasionally it’s to address faculty and deans. Primarily, though, it’s to talk to a group that’s especially vulnerable to the impostor syndrome—students. It makes perfect sense really. What other group do you know who have their knowledge and skills literally tested and graded practically on a daily basis?
    If you graduated from high school near the head of your class or were otherwise recognized for your academic excellence, you probably got used to being seen as the best and the brightest. But then you went off to college, where suddenly you were just one of many. Now who are you? On the other hand, if you were an average student in high school and then went on to do well in college or beyond, you might question how you managed to pull it off.
    It’s possible that you began your academic life quite confident, only to have your confidence squashed by an insensitive educator. It’s a story I’ve heard far too often. One distraught engineering student was told by her professor, “You are certainly not brilliant, but you may be able to muddle through.” Another master’s student who worked under a cruel and condescending advisor told me that the most encouraging comment he heard in four years was “Nothing in your thesis is too egregious.” Translation: “Your work doesn’t suck too bad.” With feedback like that, how could anyone’s self-confidence not suffer?
    The higher the achievement stakes, the more likely you’ll wind up feeling like a fraud. If you were considered academically gifted or enrolled in honors classes, you may feel more pressure to be brilliant. Or you may have skated through your undergraduate years relatively confident, but once you decided to get an advanced degree you began to wonder whether you really had what it takes to go from student to scholar. In any of thesescenarios you wonder,
Do I know enough? Can I really do this? Am I good enough?
    If you’re a student, there are a few things you want to keep in mind. One is that every field, from law to psychology to art, has its own specialized and often unnecessary convoluted language. In order to be deemed sufficiently knowledgeable or scholarly, you’re required to “elevate” things that could just as easily be described in everyday language. At times the language can be so dense that even when you’re relatively well versed in an area, you may still have to read the same sentence over and over again to comprehend what’s being said. Whether you eventually decipher it or not, the fact that you had to struggle in the first place can set off your impostor alarm. Truth be told, if more experts communicated with the goal of making their work accessible to a larger population, everyone, including you, would feel a lot smarter—and be more informed.
    When you’re surrounded by well-educated people it’s easy to assume that everyone else is somehow “smarter” than you. Some are. Some aren’t. Either way, as Thomas Armstrong points out in
7 Kinds of Smart: Identifying and Developing Your Multiple Intelligences
, there are different ways of being smart—and “book-smart” is just one of them.
    When intellectual insecurity does strike, try to remind yourself that not only did you sign up to have your knowledge and ability tested on a regular basis, but you
paid
for the privilege. After all, getting an education costs good money. So approach being a student as you would being any paying consumer and take advantage of every possible resource available to you, including tutoring and academic advising. Recognize too that some subjects are going to come more easily to you and others you’re going to have to really work at. If you’re struggling to do the work, stop being embarrassed or judging yourself as inadequate and seek assistance instead.
    Most of all, you need to