What got me here?

Luck?

Months of hard work?

Gumption?

Determination?

Am I ever going to be good enough?

That’s the voice I heard in my head, echoing through the shiny lobby of my new office every single morning.

At first, I thought it was just me. The new girl. The one in tech. The one trying to prove herself in rooms that seem to speak a language you’re still trying to learn.

But then I looked into it. And it turns out:

I’m not the only one.

According to research, between 62% and 75% of professionals experience imposter syndrome in the workplace specifically.

Not just once, not just briefly - regularly. So yeah, it’s not just you.

And if you identify as a woman, you’re even more likely to feel it. Around 70–75% of women report having experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their career, compared to 58–63% of men (source).

What’s interesting, frustrating even, is that it’s most common among the people who care the most. The high achievers. The early-career creatives. The thinkers, the feelers, the try-harders. It often coexists with being ambitious, capable, and deeply self-aware.

Basically, the people who are doing great are the ones feeling like they’re faking it.

Make it make sense.

Maybe it’s the system that made us feel like this in the first place.

And I’m not just talking about the workplace here, I’m talking about school.

But first, a side note:

I’ve never seen Harry Potter.

And no, that’s not some quirky personality trait. It’s just... I was never that kid.

I couldn’t sit still long enough to get into wizards and spell books. You were more likely to find me making a volcano out of Fairy Liquid than watching the Teletubbies. I’d be building makeshift rocket ships in the garden before I’d sit still for a cartoon.

I had a thing for gadgets. I loved Doctor Who and Top Gear - anything that moved, sparked, beeped. I was wired to explore.

Kids like me? We were often labelled as "the ones with potential."

Until Year 4 or 5 hit.

And suddenly, potential wasn’t measured in ideas or imagination anymore.

It was measured in scores out of 100.

The system changed, and we had to change with it. The weird, creative, high-energy kids were now just... underperforming. Distracted. Unfocused.

We weren’t doing badly.

We just weren’t doing it the way they wanted us to.

Fast forward to today, and not much has changed.

Schools still haven’t caught up with the world.

Kids are being handed AK-47s - the internet - but taught to use a bow and arrow - the curriculum.

They’re living in a digital-first, AI-everywhere, post-attention-span society, and still being asked to write essays about fronted adverbials.

So what happens when the world finally values the outliers? The builders, the lateral thinkers, the creatively chaotic, the ones the system quietly forgot about.

We enter the workforce... and feel like frauds.

We are the edge cases who never felt seen. And now that the world is asking for edge-case thinking, we still hesitate - waiting for someone to give us permission to show up as we are.

But here’s the plot twist I’m trying to accept:

You don’t have to feel ready to be ready.

You don’t have to feel confident to be competent.

You don’t have to feel like you belong to belong.

If you're walking into rooms wondering whether you faked your way in, remember: most of us are. And that quiet, doubting voice in your head? It’s not a sign that you’re a fraud. It’s a sign that you care.

And sometimes, caring loudly in a world that still rewards quiet conformity is the bravest thing you can do.