Struggling with Imposter Syndrome

[capitalttruth]

I got all of my 1L grades back and I did really well. No complaints there. But I now feel a tremendous amount of pressure to maintain my GPA for next year; there is a part of me that feels my performance this year was flukey and that I can't keep this up. I've had a dream to clerk at one of the federal courts for many years and the fact that I have the grades to be eligible for such a position (along with other qualifications such as RA experience and recent publications) is driving this feeling of pressure. I'm just wondering if this is a common feeling and 1) how to make sense of these feelings, and 2) whether anyone who did well in 1L has advice on how to maintain their performance in upper years.

Edited May 28, 2022 by capitalttruth

[Byzantine]

No real advice, but if you did well in 1L it’s based on a pretty large sample size in terms of deliverables (midterms / finals / lots of classes) and there’s lots of competition. Very unlikely / impossible to be a fluke. 
 

Congrats you earned it! I just finished 1L as well and happy with how I did so just going to keep doing the same thing going forward + apply what I learned during exams. Try to procrastinate less and start my cans earlier!

[ArchivesandMuseums]

1 hour ago, capitalttruth said:

I got all of my 1L grades back and I did really well. No complaints there. But I now feel a tremendous amount of pressure to maintain my GPA for next year; there is a part of me that feels my performance this year was flukey and that I can't keep this up. I've had a dream to clerk at one of the federal courts for many years and the fact that I have the grades to be eligible for such a position (along with other qualifications such as RA experience and recent publications) is driving this feeling of pressure. I'm just wondering if this is a common feeling and 1) how to make sense of these feelings, and 2) whether anyone who did well in 1L has advice on how to maintain their performance in upper years.

Congratulations! Every person who performed well in 1 L consistently did well, based on my experiences at uOttawa. You do not even need to worry.

[Ripcord]

Ya, it's a very common feeling! My advice to anyone going through this is to make your peace with it (easier said than done). Putting it off is very hard to do and can be all-consuming. I always tried to address it head-on and it always helped to hear my upper-years or others at work that were more senior than me pretty much say that they still feel the same way. A whole bunch of imposters together means no one isn't an imposter (if that made sense ahahah). 

In terms of maintaining the grades, just keep doing what you're doing. There isn't any reason to reinvent the wheel. If you do want to clerk at the FC, try looking at some mooting experience. It always helped for me to do hands-on things to somewhat alleviate my imposter syndrome as well. Having the chance to participate in a moot worked wonders for me to finally start thinking "you belong here" rather than the "what the heck are you doing here, ya doof". 

If your school is anything like mine, you'll have a wide range of courses to choose from in your upper-year. Take the courses you really find interesting. I'm also weirdly not bad at 100% finals, so I decided to take as many of those as I could rather than courses with mini-assignments or a paper component. You have a great 1L under your belt, just cast a glance back and see what you did that really set you up for success.