Battling with imposter syndrome

I remember when I wrote this article, about my journey so far, I was excited about learning, about the progress I had made so far, I was proud of myself — I am proud of myself.

I made it a finalist on the HNG internship — anyone that has heard of HNG knows how gruesome the internship process can be. Making it to stage 10 as a finalist was one of my most significant achievements in 2020. The experience was challenging, but it shaped me into a better programmer, and I'll remember it forever.

Soon after the internship, I saw my peers learning advanced frameworks, and I compared my progress to theirs and began to wonder if I would ever get to that level they were on. I decided to jump on a framework, so I started learning React. I focused more on catching up instead of going through the journey at my pace, which was a grave mistake, so I gassed out.

I fell into limbo; I was unmotivated to do anything related to code; I knew I needed to take a break from it all, so I took a break. It turned to a week and then a month and then months from what initially started as a short time off. It didn't help that all I could see on Twitter were I just got the job tweets, especially getting no feedback from job applications I had sent out. I think this fueled my imposter syndrome. I started to think maybe I wasn't just good enough; perhaps I was a fraud that knew absolutely nothing. These thoughts made me slack more. Time passed, and I didn't know how to dig myself out. Somehow, my anxiety won.

I knew I needed to help myself, and no amount of perp talk or motivational talks could do it. I was the only one that could decide when enough was enough when the slacking had to stop.

So I started small, went back to my old projects, tried to refactor some codes, and somehow from spending less than 30mins on my PC, I went back to spending more time on it. I didn't rush back to React immediately; I had to do a lot of javascript refreshers, which I learned at my pace. And soon enough, I felt I was ready to start my React journey.

My react journey was bumpy — it is still rough, but I enjoy learning React, building components, styling them, and making them functional.

One of the methods that also helped was documenting my learning process; I tried to write about what I had learned to refer back whenever I got stuck. And this process significantly improved my technical writing skills.

I don't think the imposter syndrome has left me entirely, but I know I'm in a better place now than I was in 2020/2021. I'm better at writing React, I'm better at many things, and I'm not afraid of putting myself out there.

I've interviewed with some companies, and even though the wait for feedback gives me mad anxiety, I think I'd be okay with whatever the outcome is. I'll keep learning, growing, improving myself, and not be afraid of rejections.

So have I made progress? I would say absolutely!

I'm not going to stop now. If I need to pause and catch a breather — I'll do that, but I won't forget why I started. I won't forget the bias I intend to break.

My article helped me rediscover my purpose and ultimately helped get me back on my feet.

I hope this acts as a future letter to myself whenever I fall into that limbo state again. I'm also hoping this helps someone, maybe not as a motivation but as a reminder of why you should continue.