When I was six years old, my second-grade teacher, a woman with obvious influence over how I would come to see myself and the world, told me I was the very definition of a fraud.
An ‘idiot savant’, while I appeared intelligent to an observer, in reality I was just a parrot – my only sophistication was an ability to imitate my peers and nothing more. Further, I should never bother attempting to do anything of consequence because whatever I accomplished would only be derivative of someone else’s work and my only success would be to draw attention away from those who actually deserved it – that would be a very shameful thing for me to do. And so I should resign myself to one day holding a menial job in a mundane life and leave having aspirations to real people who actually had the capacity to do useful things, and not just be a pointless distraction from those people.
I literally didn’t have an original thought in my head, and I should learn to accept that.
Pretty harsh words! But I have lived with them echoing in my mind every single day since – and it would be a lie to say it hasn’t been a struggle. I mean, I can look back as an adult and (try to) conclude that what likely really prompted my teacher’s tirade was that I showed up her favourite student, not that she genuinely believed I was this golem she made me out to be. But I was six years old and not yet cynical enough to realise she was simply trying to eliminate me as competition for her ‘pet’ and not giving me objective advice designed to protect me from the world (and vice-versa). She was my teacher, and at that age I was susceptible to being programmed, and she programmed me to believe that even if I thought I could create something novel, or invent something or solve a problem of importance, I never would.
And, if it seemed like I did, I should check myself because it would be guaranteed to be discovered that wittingly or unwittingly I stole it from someone else – that I was being criminal, and hurting others, and it would be thoroughly irresponsible for me to ever entertain it could be otherwise.
It’s hard to think of anything worse you could do to a child. My teacher destroyed my self-confidence in such a way that was impossible for me to ever recover from it. In my head I will always be a charlatan – The Great Imitator. If I come up with a nice melody, I must have heard it somewhere before. A story? Must have read it before. An idea? Well, I must have come across it somewhere else. Or it must be obvious and someone’s sure to have had the same thought, but apparently it was wrong, and I should forget it. Because I am just an automaton, a fancy, fleshy machine that takes inputs I notice other people ascribe value to and reprocess them into outputs, presenting them as my own.
My supposed intelligence is only a defence mechanism, designed so that nobody will realise how truly stupid I am and take advantage of me. Intellectual camouflage. I am a Potemkin village of an person – the lights are on but nobody’s actually home.
I grew up with that in my head. Really. In. My. Head.
So, you think you have ‘imposter syndrome’? You struggle with ‘a vague feeling you’re not everything you’re cracked-up to be’? Please. Spare a thought for the six year-old child told by her educator, someone she trusted, that she actually was an imposter and would always be one, no matter what. Because the truth is, you’re a ‘real person’, you’re not an imposter at all. And, unlike me, you can accomplish anything you want.
After all, I am the real imposter. Teacher said so.
Melody Ayres-Griffiths 