Working On It

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Right after I accepted the job that got me started down this path, and shortly before I actually began doing it, I had a rather significant freak out. I remember it distinctly.

I was sitting in my cleverly designated "office" (also known as my parents' dinning room) anxiously fiddling through HR paperwork. Like the good-little neurotic employee I planned to be, I had logged into the company email remotely to set up my account preferences so they would be ready in two weeks when I actually started. Excited, I realized that I had already been added to the team e-mail list. The curiosity tagged the over-achiever in me, and I clicked the first of several messages open. What I discovered was an overwhelming amount of information about deadlines, time frames, and expectations all cloaked in some kind of agency jargon that made no sense to me.

Shit, I thought. I don't know how to do any of this!

Then I did what any responsible and mature 23 year old woman does. 

I ran crying to my mommy.

Through broken breaths and heaving sobs, I frantically described for her what a massive mistake I had made. I told her I wasn't ready. Like a crazy person I speculated about my imposter status. I rationalized that I had wanted this job so badly I had actually tricked several experienced mental health professionals into thinking I knew what I was talking about.

Likely bewildered, my mother patted my back. She looked me in the eye and frankly told me to put on my big girl pants and get over it.

"Of course you don't know what you're supposed to be doing!" she shook her head with exasperation. "You haven't done it yet. That's what training time is for." She explained that I hadn't tricked anybody into anything, and that all new jobs have a learning curve. Then, she abruptly instructed me to calm down already.

Honestly, I walked away from that interaction feeling like my mom had no idea what she was talking about. I mean, she hadn't seen those e-mails. She didn't fully understand the magnitude of my predicament. Now, several years later, I'm not so sure.

I find myself in a rather similar state of panic over ineptitude in my current position. I wake up nearly every day thinking to myself, what have I gotten myself into? Most of the time I'm convinced I have no idea what I'm doing. More often, I think about how I seem to have fooled each of my supervisors into thinking that I do. On more than one occasion I've actually practiced a "coming clean" type of speech that will explain my actual ignorance to this group of highly educated individuals.

It's definitely not a good feeling, but when I think back to other times I've had these sensations I'm reminded of my retail job in college when I fretted excessively over just what particular style to fold the t-shirts in. I also think of my first actual job at a movie theater, and the shame I felt when the manager accused me of misrepresenting my (very real bike race) concessions experience because, to him, that meant knowing how to work a pop tower. The common thread here does seem to be new jobs.

Perhaps what's even more important is that I eventually learned to work that pop tower and I am now an expert shirt folder. Also, those deadlines and time frames where concerning treatment issues that would eventually become so important to me I went to grad school so I could make a serious career out of them.

Maybe the freak out is all just part of the process. Maybe that irrational panic and absolute conviction that I'm an imposter is just proof that I'm ready to learn. And maybe, just maybe, my mom was right after all.

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If you yourself have ever found yourself afflicted with a similar case of the unnecessary worries, read this woman's blog.  It helped me a LOT.