Don't gatekeep yourself from learning.#

Like many others, throughout college, I had imposter syndrome about a number of things. Meeting so many other people who seemingly had it all figured out, or who you believed to be leagues above you in something or the other inevitably causes these kinds of feelings. When you are surrounded by so many people who are seemingly on a similar path to yours, it is hard not to constantly benchmark yourself against others. Typical advice centers around the idea of just don't compare yourself, but I think that is a little too broad. Taking a good look around to see what other people are up to or investing time in has some value, but separating that from your own self-worth is important.

Where comparison turned into a roadblock for me is that while in college, everything seems so procedural. Do you want to end up in investment banking? Cool, major in economics or business. Do you want to become a software engineer? Nice, major in Computer Science. It makes everything seem like there is a ladder to climb or an ordered set of items you need to collect to get from where you are to where you want to be. The idea that there is already a map that should tell me how to get from my current self to a new self that had some new skills was what brought some of my growth to a standstill. I had internalized the belief that the order of courses I took to get my degree also applied to anything else I wanted to learn. That I needed to start from square one of every pathway and climb rung by rung to the top of each separate ladder to get where I wanted to go.

It's pretty easy to adopt this mindset, and for some things pre-requisites make sense, but most of the time it is best to just jump in. Most of the time you can figure it out yourself, and if not, you will likely have figured out that you need to learn some other things first or concurrently. I think of this as doing a crossword, you start with what you do know, and then you figure out what you don't, using what you already sorted.

Ultimately for me, this changed how I approached picking up something new. Just forgoing the formality, jumping in, and figuring out the rest. Forget the ladders, make your own ziplines.