Have you ever felt like an imposter amongst your friends? Like if they were to find out who you really are – the hell and high waters that have shaped you into this complex combination of cells they now call friend – they might look at you through eyes that no longer understand.
My earliest memory of imposter syndrome was in the early days of my degree at a Russell Group university. My counterparts were mostly middle class white and well-off South-Asian (white-adjacent) students who claimed to live as paupers while always being able to afford a night on the town or a European weekend break. I felt like the sun in a midnight sky, out of place and exposed. There were moments I lay in my dorm room and fantasised about a life where I had opted for the polytechnic down the road, where my skin folk were not a rarity.
My short-lived despair confirmed that I never wanted this feeling of ‘other’ to course through my limbs again. During one of my seminars, I met a half Nigerian, half Jamaican girl who opened me up to a group of African and Caribbean students who had also made this small northern city their term-time home.