{"id":1152,"date":"2023-07-19T16:11:06","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T16:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2023-07-26T20:28:25","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T20:28:25","slug":"squashing-imposter-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/07\/squashing-imposter-syndrome\/","title":{"rendered":"Squashing imposter syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As soon as I arrived on Northwestern&#8217;s campus, I braced myself. Playing out potential conversations in my head, I settled on a worst-case scenario: I\u2019d meet someone, reveal I hadn\u2019t worked on a school newspaper before, and they\u2019d decide I wasn\u2019t worth their time. I was so overwhelmed with doubt that I convinced myself people could see it on my face \u2013 I wasn&#8217;t qualified.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was wrestling with my own mind. I knew I was here for a reason, but I couldn\u2019t help but walk into every lecture, look around and stack myself up against my peers, all of whom I was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">sure <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">were leagues ahead of me in journalism experience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During the first week of the program, several Cherubs and I holed up in Fisk Hall to craft ledes for a series of absurd news stories. As our instructors critiqued our drafts down to the word, we deliberated and compared notes, moving our swivel chairs into a huddle. It occurred to me that this program wasn\u2019t \u201ceasy\u201d for anyone, and my expectations shattered as quickly as they crystallized. People relied on me as much as they relied on each other, and I felt my anxiety slowly dwindling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until I arrived at Cherubs, I expected that I would be a complete outsider, isolated by my lack of experience. After these four weeks, though, I\u2019m less inclined to let any \u201cmissing\u201d line on my resume define my potential.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coming to Cherubs without school paper experience, I was convinced I wouldn&#8217;t fit in. Focusing on the work and collaborating with other people helped me find my footing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[134],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":134,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-sthaler","display_name":"Sabrina Thaler","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2899,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions\/2899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}