Impostor schmmoster

My daughter passed her final nursing exam this week.

She got a placement. A real, paid, adult job. Earned. Done. After years of study, clinical placements, late nights and everything that nursing training actually asks of a person (including dealing with things I certainly don't have the stomach for).

I sent her this message: "Exciting... You'll have like... an adult job that's PAID alhamdulillah."

Her reply?

"Impostor syndrome."

Two words. No celebration. No relief. Just the immediate, reflexive questioning of whether she actually belongs in the room she just qualified to enter.

My reply: "Impostor schmmoster."

And I meant it.

I want to push back on that label - not because the feeling isn't real, but because calling it a syndrome treats it as a malfunction. It's not. It's a completely understandable response to years of being in spaces that quietly asked you to be less than you are. It's not a disorder. It's data.

So let's call it what it is: the fitting-in tax, coming due.

The tax nobody talks about
Earlier this week I posted a quote that's been getting some traction:

"Fitting in is a full time job. And the pay is terrible."

I wrote it thinking about the professionals I work with - people who spend enormous energy managing how much of themselves is safe to bring into a room. Adjusting. Softening. Calculating. Editing.

What I didn't say - but what that exchange with my daughter made clear - is what years of paying that tax actually produces.

The doubt isn't random. It doesn't arrive uninvited for no reason. For a lot of people, especially those from minority backgrounds stepping into spaces not designed with them in mind, it's the accumulated residue of years of fitting-in work. And doubly so if you happen to be a woman.

When you've spent long enough learning that belonging requires performance, achievement stops feeling like proof. It starts feeling like luck. Or a mistake waiting to be discovered.

My daughter didn't fail her exam. She passed it. She earned the placement. The evidence is unambiguous.

Did the doubt care? No.

Because this was never an evidence problem
This is the part that trips people up.

We think if we just achieve enough - qualify enough, prove enough, accumulate enough credentials - the feeling will eventually go away. So we keep going. Keep earning. Keep building the case.

And the feeling stays.

Because the doubt isn't asking "have you done enough?"

It's asking "are you really someone who belongs here?"

That's an identity question. And you can't answer an identity question with a certificate. And you can't fill an identity gap with more knowledge.

What actually shifts it is something harder and more personal than another qualification. It's the decision - made consciously, repeatedly, sometimes daily - to walk into the room as the person who earned the right to be there. Not the person who slipped through somehow. Not the person waiting to be found out. The person who did the work and is now here to do more of it.

That decision doesn't feel like confidence at first. It feels like a choice you make before the confidence arrives. Because confidence doesn't arrive while waiting, it's built by doing.

What I actually meant by "Impostor schmmoster"
I wasn't dismissing what my daughter felt. The feeling is real. I've felt it myself - in boardrooms, in professional introductions, in rooms where I was the only person who looked like me.

What I was refusing to do was let the feeling have the last word.

Because here's what I know about my daughter: she is qualified. She is capable. She has been tested, assessed, examined and found ready by people whose job it is to make that determination.

The placement didn't happen to her. She made it happen.

And the nursing profession isn't getting a lucky break. It's getting someone who has prepared for exactly this.

"Impostor schmmoster" was my way of saying: I see you. I know what you're feeling. And I also know it's not the truth.

The room you've earned
Here's what I want to say to anyone reading this who is standing at the threshold of a room they've worked hard to enter - and whose first instinct is to wonder whether they really belong there:

The feeling is understandable. Especially if you've spent years paying the fitting-in tax. Especially if the rooms you're entering weren't historically designed with people like you in mind. Especially if the voice in your head has had more practice at doubt than at recognition.

But feeling is not fact.

You qualified. You were selected. You prepared. You showed up. 

That's not luck. That's you.

And the room isn't doing you a favour by letting you in.  You're doing it a favour by arriving.

Final thought
So here are the questions worth sitting with this week:

• Where are you letting a feeling override evidence that you've clearly earned the right to be somewhere?

• How much of your doubt is genuinely about your readiness - and how much is the residue of years of fitting-in work?

• And what would change if you walked into your next room leading with what you've built - rather than apologising for being there?

Because fitting in is a full time job. And the pay is terrible.

But showing up as yourself - in the room you earned - that compounds.

Go on. Take the Next Step.