I think my girlfriend has impostor syndrome and she has this bad. We just finished out master's degree in physics. She believes that she didn't even deserve the degree. While it's true that I helped her a lot with learning but she never cheated on a single exam.
It's really bad and just because it occasionally turns her down. It really affects her decisions and makes her nervous on verbal exams. I'm sure that the teachers are well aware of this syndrome even if they don't know it's name because it's quite common among students. So it really didn't matter at verbal exams. Now that she starts job hunting it could be a huge problem.
I just read about impostor syndrome like two days ago and I really don't know how to introduce it to her. If you tell a paranoid person that he/she has paranoia than the answer could be that "well, it's not paranoia if they really follow you everywhere".
I believe I "suffer" from imposter syndrome myself. In highly technical and forever knowledge expanding fields like tech and science it's easy to always feel behind. Odds are someone somewhere knows more than you about a particular topic. The more we know, the more we know that there's even more we don't know. I think that's the curse for me. I focus on the unfinished rather than the accomplished. When a superior asks me a technical question I may not know the answer off the top of my head but I have confidence that I can learn or find the answer or a solution. I fear others will see an imposter instead of a valuable skillset: ability to quickly learn and discover.
It's really bad and just because it occasionally turns her down. It really affects her decisions and makes her nervous on verbal exams. I'm sure that the teachers are well aware of this syndrome even if they don't know it's name because it's quite common among students. So it really didn't matter at verbal exams. Now that she starts job hunting it could be a huge problem.
I just read about impostor syndrome like two days ago and I really don't know how to introduce it to her. If you tell a paranoid person that he/she has paranoia than the answer could be that "well, it's not paranoia if they really follow you everywhere".