It's still Monday somewhere

Well, going to see The DaVinci Code got in the way of my actual blogging on Monday, but I haven't yet gone to sleep so I say this post still counts as my Monday post.

whilst reading the news/ blogs today, I didn't run across anything that I really felt like blogging about, so I'm going to pull out a topic that I've wanted to talk about for as long as I've had this particular blog(so not very long...)

A while ago, I attended a talk in our department about Women in Computer Science. We occasionally have speakers come in and give talks about this sort of thing and they all say the same thing, that women are different then men and then they go into some pipe dream of how to solve the problem. This particular speaker mentioned something known as the imposter syndrome. I hadn't ever heard of it before this talk. Essentially, its a common personality trait in which people think the things they accomplish happen by shear luck. They feel like they are an imposter in their success, only waiting to be figured out.

Today, while having dinner with the boyfriend, we were talking about Christian t-shirts and he mentioned that he wanted one with Micah 6:8 on it.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Of these things, I find walking humbly with God to be the hardest... As one who possesses the imposter syndrome personality trait, it's easy to say that I'm not good enough, and I am un-worthy of my success thus far in life (my parents keep telling me I'm successful...). This sort of attitude is easily confused with humility. But in some ways, it just as conceited as being conceited. It forgets one of the most important parts of humility which is recognizing that what you have is from God, all your good traits and you bad. If you focus to much on not being good enough, you are not remembering that God has given you talents and skills, and that is the reason for your success, and you are worthy of it, because God says you are!

Next time I worry about my advisor "finding me out" perhaps I will look to Micah for inspiration.