I was called an imposter at my very first interview for an internship back in my final year of undergrad. It hurt me so badly that I almost cried calling my mother. I was devasted for a month. It was then when I decided to never seat for any job interviews rather fantasized over the stop-motion imaginary interviews where I throw my hefty portfolio over the desk to the interview panel.
Biggest mistake of my life!!!
What I should have done was work on my soft skills and make myself more presentable.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover…”
But once a friend argued, “shouldn’t a good book at least have a decent cover?” He was right.
Back to the imposter topic. That was not the first time I fucked up an interview. The other significant one was a viva for my undergrad university admission. I could not say more than three sentences on “tell me about yourself” and from there it all went only downhill. In the end, the teacher asked whether I cheated on the written exam and he seemed genuinely shocked while saying “how did you get the highest mark in written if you weren’t cheating!?” (which I did not know btw, as the admission test scores were classified.)
So what did I do about it? I self-diagnosed myself as socially awkward and stopped there. It’s easier to find a clinical term and assume disability than accepting a lacking and to work on it.
(…maybe continued)