It has been eight weeks since the semester started, and it has been nothing but stressful. As a first-year Data Science student juggling all the coursework with minimal coding experience compared to most of my classmates, everyday feels overwhelming. There is a constant fear of missing deadlines, dropping grades, not understanding content and most importantly, the fear of being left behind because you are not as smart enough as others.
I have been having imposter syndrome for the past few weeks. I feared that someone at Purdue would find out that I am not actually as intelligent as most people studying Computer or Data Science. This fear was an amalgamation of scrolling through ‘Purdue CS 2024’ group chats, reading other students’ resumes through workshops, and my own insecurities about my intellect. There was this one time where on a CS group chat, a couple of people started talking about the various activities, projects, internship preparation and extra online classes they were doing. All these students had planned so much of their college and knew exactly what they wanted. I, on the other hand, had no clue we even needed to do half of those things. I made a to-do list of all those topics everyone was talking about and as I added something new to that list, I got even more overwhelmed. I did not understand how everyone could handle all of this
All my stress and anxiety continued to accumulate as the days went by until I joined a Zoom webinar about ‘Data Science’ where one of the guys said, “if you’re in a room with people who are all better than you, then you’re in the right room.” What he said hit me hard. I realized that there is always room for learning and growing. It is okay that I do not know what is going on. All that really matters is that I am willing to make the effort to learn more. We are all on different paths and we do not necessarily need to do the same things. Take your time, enjoy the process, and do not put so much pressure on yourself. It will all work out in the end.