Test - Imposter

coming...

You're used to being a high performer. I'm definitely guilty of it, where you find tasks that are difficult, you're able to throw yourself into them and you excel. And even if you're not the best, you're not the gold medalist, you were at the Olympics and so you feel good about that. But then you come up against something.

For me specifically it was French. I don't hear very well and my education was a little squirrelly growing up, so I didn't end up having to take language in school. So I never had to learn a language before. I didn't know a lot of grammatical terms. It was just this flood of information that I couldn't hear well and it's a requirement for getting my degree and I just didn't have the option not to do it. There wasn't a way for me to choose to take something easier or whatever, try though I may have. I just had to grind it out. The way that you approach that with this sort of, if you have this fixed mindset of this is what my natural abilities are and my capacities are and I can't do French, or I'm not a math person, or whatever it is versus coming into something understanding that you didn't know anything about blowing up tanks either before they started teaching you about it in the military.

So that's okay and checking the ego, leaving it aside, understanding, being willing to have more of a growth mindset where you're saying okay this is what my natural capacities are currently, but this is something I can train. This is something I can improve and by really putting in the time and understanding how other people approach this when they have difficulties. Asking other students at school, asking your academic advisors, saying where can I get tutoring? How do I do this better and spend my time more wisely in approaching this material because it's sucking up six hours of my day and I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. How do I do this better? Realizing that that's something that you're going to have to do and you don't improve if you don't put in the work.