I Used to Think I Was Smart, by an MIT Alumna

and why the phrase “Fake it til you make it” is actually incredibly self destructive

I have been telling myself to fake it until I make it ever since I opened my acceptance letter to boarding school. The phrase started out as a confidence booster; if I could trick them enough to accept me, I could trick myself into thinking I was smart enough to actually belong there. (Phillips Exeter Academy — I put the name in parenthesis because if I lead with that it just sounds… so snobby).

Flash forward to now — I am 24 years old, job searching in the bay area after graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. If that 16 y/o could peak into my current reality, she would definitely say I made it. I bet she wouldn’t even think I had to fake it to get here. She’d be ecstatic. How sad it is to look at yourself on a resume, and believe you faked it all. To believe that you just fooled admissions, fooled friends, teammates, coworkers, professors, etc. into thinking you are capable? I can’t let that Debby Downer inside of me take center stage. She hasn’t felt smart since 10th grade… what changed then? What morphs determined, assured, applicants into self-doubting admitted students? Probably a deadly cocktail of expectations, self-talk, and fear.

So. Dear me and anyone who cares to read this,

Under no circumstance are you allowed to say “Fake it til you make it.” Zero. Zilch. Nada. No excuses. To say so is to pretend that you are not all the amazing things you really, truly, are.

Read that again. Nope, really, go back and read that one again. I’ll wait.

Okay good, moving on. That silly phrase implies that only the fake you is important, and impactful, and valued. That shinier, happier, smarter, more confident, girl boss version of you. When you say it, you are telling yourself that you cannot succeed unless you pretend to be something you are not. The aftermath of this is a closely held belief that it was fake and it was all a trick anyways. But it wasn’t fake. You did it. It is an experience that you can own, if you let yourself. The strange thing is, the moments when I was at the height of my “faking” were exactly when I felt the most like myself. It was when I was excited to solve a problem, curious, at ease, and flowing.

If you precede your actions with inherently self-doubting encouragement, like “fake it til you make it,” then even after you accomplish that terribly hard achievement, upon reflection you will be convinced you did not earn it.

Haha! Did it again. Just gotta keep faking it until I make it. If only I actually knew what I was doing. News flash: No one knows what they are doing. No one. Returning to my resume, my portfolio, my interview prep, I’ve decided to purge the thought from my self talk and replace it with a new one:

“I can, and have, done really cool and really hard things.” It doesn’t have a nice ring to it yet. Let me know if you can think of a better one. This does the trick for now, but it’s still a prototype. Definitely minimum viable though!

I have done really. really. hard things. I earned that MIT degree with blood sweat, tears, endless hours on Zoom, covid tests, extracurriculars shoved into “free time,” and a few ordeals I don’t care to list. I did that. I didn’t do it alone, but how could you? I made friends through that. I learned new things, every damn day. I found a love for engineering, and chased it down. I built a brain that thinks about random free body diagrams for objects in front of me… for fun. Probably twice a day, at least (if you know, you know).

On our first day of freshmen orientation, the president of MIT told us one phrase to hold onto: “You belong here.” I think 90% of us didn’t believe him. At graduation, we looked at each other and said “We did it. we did that? Holy sh** we did it” through tears of disbelief and joy. I will NOT let myself look at my name, in fancy serif font, under Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and convince myself I didn’t earn it. I was there. And I did it.

Now I have tasked myself with believing my best friend when she tells me how amazing I am. Believing my mom, and my sisters, and my friends. It isn’t easy, but is anything important ever really easy? I urge you to do the same. You deserve it. Now louder for the people in the back —

You deserve it. You’ve got this.

Sincerely,

a curious, kind, determined, creative, strong

engineer, friend, mentor, artist, star-wars enthusiast, dancer, comedian, poet, cook, daughter, sister, aunt…. and much more.

P.S. Thank you for reading my very public affirmation, until next time (: