Imposter Syndrome and the Final Phase of a Coding Bootcamp: Inevitable Perhaps, but Possible to Overcome?

In my previous blogs, I have not had much of a chance to introduce myself, as I have spent my time focused on what I was learning, and tackling difficult coding topics.

However, I just finished week 13 of my 15 week bootcamp and I am in the final "phase" of my bootcamp, so I felt like it would be a good time to step back and talk a bit about myself, how I got here, and dealing a bit with the stress and imposter syndrome that I am feeling.

Firstly, to briefly introduce myself. My name is Amelia, or Amy to my friends, and I am 30 years old. I currently live in Kansas City, MO, but recently returned from living in Munich, Germany for about a year and a half. While I was there, I learned German, and also considering trying to get experience in coding, but it did not work out. When I returned to the US, I was discouraged and unsure what to do next. I had always had this interest in coding and software development. But was it really the right path for me?

I began by working on coding independently, but it was hard to stay on task day after day with many other things in life pulling my attention away.

That is when I decided a bootcamp would be a good fit for me. I did tons of research on different bootcamps, making excel spreadsheets, and looking at career outcomes, schedules, and other data. Ultimately, Flatiron felt like a great fit for me. The schedule matched something that was achievable for me, and the career services and prospects seemed good as well.

So far in this bootcamp, there have been numerous ups and downs. But I should have seen that coming. In our introduction, we were warned about imposter syndrome.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines imposter syndrome as, "a psychological condition that is characterized by persistent doubt concerning one's abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one's ongoing success"[1].

I personally feel like Flatiron explained it just as well as Merriam-Webster if not better. They explained that when you do not know what you do not know, you can feel okay with not knowing, but once you start to know some, and you realize all that you do not know, you will start to feel this imposter syndrome. It will come both in comparing your knowledge to the full knowledge you hope to gain, and in comparing yourself to others.

Imposter syndrome has confronted me week after week, and I have continuously had to decide if I should listen to it or ignore it.

I will admit, there were times where I fell into doubting myself, doubting my abilities, and worse of all, feeling like I would never learn enough or know enough. But I had to keep moving, and not stay stuck in these feelings, as due to the pace of the bootcamp, there was always more work to do and more to learn.

Trying again the next day (or something even later that night) became a cornerstone of my work at Flatiron. I learned that moments of discouragement and imposter syndrome would occur, but that the key for me lay in being able to feel those feelings, and then set them aside and keep on working.

In short, the only way out was through.

Now I am in the final phase of my bootcamp. This phase has no more labs to do, no more mandatory lectures, no more new things to learn. Instead, now it is time to show what I have learned.

This has felt quite daunting. A whole project, all by myself? Impossible! The imposter syndrome is strong. Am I doing enough work day to day to reach MVP in time? Is my work good enough? Unique enough? Impressive enough?

Doubts lurk around every corner. Luckily, my process from my work throughout the bootcamp has come back to me. I can have these thoughts of doubt, feel like an imposter, but I have to keep going, keep working, and most importantly keep coding!

Many people in my bootcamp have expressed some form of imposter syndrome at some point in these first 13 weeks of the bootcamp. So while it may not be universal, it is common.

In this final phase, with this final project, the stakes feel higher, the mountain looks bigger, the risk of failure feels worse. But just as before, the only way out is through.

Here's to getting through.

(Cross posted on Medium at: Imposter Syndrome and the Final Phase of a Coding Bootcamp: Inevitable Perhaps, but Possible to Overcome?).

References:
[1] Author unknown. "Impostor syndrome
noun." Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imposter%20syndrome?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium=serp&utm_source=jsonld (accessed August 18, 2023).