2 Facing Your Fears
Learning Outcomes
- Identify fears that may interfere with learning.
- Discover ways to develop more positive feelings toward learning.
The Impact of Fear on Learning
As discussed in the previous chapter, college is a time of change. With any change comes some degree of fear. For example, students may fear making mistakes, failing, asking questions, taking tests, or writing an essay. Although a small amount of fear won’t hold you back, too much fear — an intense fear of making a mistake, of what others will think of you, or of a challenging assignment, for instance — can paralyze your mind. Fear may also lead you to feel negatively about your experience in a course or about college more generally. It is important to be honest about your fears and, if they are hindering your progress, to identify ways to reduce their impact on your learning.
Complete the following activity to reflect on your your feelings about learning, including your fears. You can complete this activity for any course that causes anxiety or fear.
Activity 1: Reflect on Your Fears
- How do you feel about taking this course? Spend 3 to 5 minutes recording your feelings and the reasons for them.
- How do want to feel about taking this course? Is this response the same as your response to question 1?
- If your responses to (1) and (2) are different, brainstorm ideas about how to change your feelings to more positive ones. What would help you to make that change?
Imposter Syndrome
The article below by Hugh Kearns focuses on a specific fear that is common in college and the workplace, a fear of not being good enough. This fear comes from imposter syndrome. According to Kearns, people experience imposter syndrome when they “…are seen as successful by outside external measures but internally they feel themselves to be frauds, undeserving of their success and in danger at any moment of being exposed” (par. 3). When students experience imposter syndrome, they may believe they are unqualified to be in college. This leads to feelings of self-doubt and the fear that others will find out.
After reading the article, complete the reflection activity.
Feel like a fraud? You might have imposter syndrome
Hugh Kearns, University of Manchester
November 26, 2013
1 To many people, the actress Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, has it all. Talent, beauty, brains, and major acting roles at a young age. Yet Emma – like many people, be they in the world of acting, academia, health or sport – has admitted to feeling like a fraud despite her success.
2 In an interview with Rookie magazine, Watson said: “It’s almost like the better I do, the more my feeling of inadequacy actually increases, because I’m just going, ‘Any moment, someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud, and that I don’t deserve any of what I’ve achieved’.”
3 This is an example of an interesting phenomenon called imposter syndrome – where people are seen as successful by outside external