The Imposter
When you think about it, the popular new game ‘Among Us’ and law school are troublingly similar. A crew of assorted individuals are thrown together and asked to complete assignment after assignment, while a random selection, unbeknownst to most, are identified as imposters, with the sole task of pretending to fit in with their peers, while covertly working to undermine and deceive teammates.
Maybe I have just described a particularly triggering group member from a past assignment, and if so I apologise. Despite our best efforts, law school is a kill or be killed atmosphere at its heart. There are literal lists of your peers paraded in front of your eyes when they receive excellent academic grades, or you see their faces plastered all over Facebook or LinkedIn when they receive the jobs and opportunities you wanted, or when they win the competitions you tried really hard to do well in, but could not even progress past the preliminary rounds. Even worse, it is often the same small group of people that seemingly get all the wins, whether they worked hard to get them or not.
I wish I could tell you that imposter syndrome just goes away. I wish I could tell you that the itch of comparison goes away the second you get your name on that Dean’s List, or get one of those elusive sevens in law, or when you finally get even just an interview for a coveted law job after years of rejection. At least in my experience, however, I cannot say that it helps much. Because every time you push through another goal, or meet a new milestone, there is always a new peak to aim for. Whether it be the end of semester exam following a good assignment mark, or the clerkship following a season of no sleep and energy drinks while poring over your applications, or whether it is trying to advance up the career ladder when you eventually nab a grad role. The grind, as they say, don’t stop. And that is just when things are actually going well.
However there is a way out of it. Going back to the game for a second, we can see that the way to beat the imposters is to band together and do two essential things: communicate well with your teammates and complete your personal tasks. Both are lessons that could take us all a very long way in law school, and do a lot to combat that pesky imposter syndrome.
Communication is an important feature of any relationship, professional and otherwise. I think sometimes we forget to make an active effort to avoid miscommunication, and to check in with each other before it is too late. Luckily in our law school scenario, the stakes are less likely to be life and death, as I do not anticipate that you will be ejecting your colleagues out of an airlock any time soon (hopefully). But, the harm of neglecting your friends through a period of stress and isolation is very real. We all know after so many periods of lockdown and forced isolation that it does not take much for our brains to go into overdrive and find reasons to assume our friends do not like us. Perhaps they have not responded to our message for an hour, when realistically they had an unexpected daytime nap. Or perhaps they “love reacted” to a mutual friend’s new profile pic and just put a measly blue thumb on your new pic. That stuff hurts, man. But it hurts significantly less if you have trust that your relationship is stronger than pixels on a screen. I know one of the biggest mistakes I made throughout my degree was closing myself off to my friends when it hit crunch time in the semester. I would virtually and literally lock myself away from social opportunities under the illusion of studying when realistically this is when I needed my friends most. Because this is when the worst of the academic stress hit, and was then compounded by the stress of feeling cut off from my friends. And frankly, it showed in my results too, so what was the point? It took until being literally locked in my house through COVID for me to realise that no matter the time of semester, friends and relationships play a pivotal role in maintaining good mental health, even if you’re otherwise in a good place. So I started making time for brunch, or dinner, or showing up to a friend’s party even if it was the same night that an assignment was due. Funnily enough, that was one of the best semesters of my entire degree. So make time for that brunch in Week 12, or even just schedule a Zoom call with your friend over lunch, because I promise you will not regret it.
On top of that, the other main thing I’ve learned in my degree is the importance of intrinsic motivation. Like the crewmates in ‘Among Us’ I think it is always better to focus on your personal goals rather than spending your energy trying to undermine other people’s successes to make yourself feel better. At the end of the day, if you have received a better assignment grade, or progressed to a later round of a competition than you have previously, then you are kicking goals! Equally, if you are having a rough time and the most you can do is just logging into your Zoom tutorial, that is also a win for you, even if the person next to you did not think twice about the anxiety associated with that tiny computer screen. We are all a different combination of goals, worries, fears, talents and personality types. It would be weird if what we were aiming for was all the same. So instead of worrying about which activities make you look like the “ideal candidate” on your clerkship applications, how about you do your best at your studies but pick the subjects you really enjoy, and go out and play your favourite sport on the weekend, or give up half your life to be in the law revue because when else do you get to mess around on stage and let out your creative energy in the legal profession?!
At the end of the day, the crewmates in ‘Among Us’ do not have a choice but to worry about the imposters, or be an imposter if given that role. But you do. You have the power to keep imposter syndrome at bay, and I promise you that if you focus on the things that bring you joy and the people that put a smile on your face, you are not just going to make it through law school in a much better headspace, but also the rest of your life. Now that’s what I call a victory.
Article by Bella Busby
This article appeared in the The Gavel #1 ‘The Among Us Issue’ (2021) Publication