This Year Will Be Different by Annika

This Year Will Be Different by Annika - August 2022 Scholarship Essay

This year, my academic goals look a little bit different than they have for the past twenty-one years of my life.

I’ve always been an ambitious person. In 8th grade, I was walking over to the high school for my last period of the school day to take Algebra II with the underclassmen. By the time I was a high school sophomore, I was taking Calculus II, by the time I was a senior – Differential Equations.

And so on it went. Needless to say, I became a math major in college, graduated a year early, and am heading to grad school now, a four-and-a-half hour drive away from my small hometown. Starting a new chapter in life is always scary. It’s nerve wracking, thrilling, exciting, and uncertain all at the same time. I don’t know what to expect. How could I? In my mind, choosing to study engineering as a graduate student after three years of math and a hefty supply of liberal arts classes sounds insane. How can I possibly succeed in an environment so much larger, so much more cutthroat, so much smarter?

But when I catch myself thinking this way, catastrophizing and doubting, I have to stop myself. I have learned to squelch the imposter syndrome – it’s unyielding, unproductive, and most of all, self-depreciative. It’s not fair to me, or the countless other women and women of color that have emblazoned their mark on my field, or the 75% of executive women that report having dealt with imposter syndrome personally (according to a KPMG study). Nor is it fair to the young girls and individuals that I’ve become friends with and mentors to over the years that will also choose STEM because I’ve convinced them it's worth it. Why should I hide behind the one or two bad grades I may have gotten before (let’s be honest – math doesn’t make sense all the time!) or the times I’ve answered confidently in class, only for it to be wrong (and then never raising my hand in that class again)? No, my academic goal for this year, this new chapter, is to raise my hand in every class. I will ask every question I have. I will brainwash myself for as long as it takes to know that I am no imposter, that I am capable and deserving of success, and that this new environment was created just for me. And then I will help others learn this too. We’ve lost too much passion and creativity to this self-created and society-perpetuated beast. And I know this personal goal of mine will translate beautifully in the classroom. I owe it to myself to end this cycle, to my fellow women, my fellow people-of-color, my fellow self-doubters. This year will be different.