Have Confidence to Learn by Teaching

JennyxYoung

Lack of confidence is one of the biggest roadblocks to success, especially in STEM fields.  By now, it is well known that Impostor Syndrome, which disproportionately impacts professional women (but affects many men as well), causes the affected to doubt themselves and ultimately under-perform their potential.  Related confidence deficiencies cause women to downplay their successes in performance reviews, not apply for positions unless they are certain they meet 100% of the qualifications, and dwell on any minor shortcoming.  You don't have to get to the workforce for these confidence issues to crop up - they happen in school as well.

In Math is Hard, But So Is Everything Else, I wrote about how it's natural to feel stuck at times.  But how can we get unstuck?  One way is to try to teach someone else the concepts you barely understand.   Doing this requires healthy dose of confidence, but it doesn't require you to actually be an expert. 

My crisis of confidence story comes from college, when I had to take a course on probability theory - a statistics course that relies on calculus concepts I did not have as solid of a grasp on as I would have liked. This wasn't the first time I struggled in a math class, but this was the first time I felt completely overwhelmed.  I was pretty certain I was doomed to get a 'C' in the class.  Given enough time I could muddle through the homework, but I barely passed the midterm and I knew I had no chance at a good grade on the final exam.  I got together with some other students just as lost as myself in a study group (mostly guys, by the way), and frankly, it started out mainly as whining about how difficult the subject was with very little actual studying. 

Eventually, my partners noticed that I was maybe half a step ahead of them, so they asked me how I solved one problem.  I was pretty sure it was just dumb luck. I had no clue what I was really doing. I started to downplay my success to my friends.  But eventually they convinced me to start explaining what I did and how I knew what I was doing.  As I started to talk through the steps, I started to understand better what I was doing - the act of assigning words to what I was doing made the process more real.  Coming up with answers to their questions of "why did you do that?" forced me to form an explanation that not only made sense in my head, but actually made sense to other people.  Once we had that breakthrough, we were able to apply the same process to different stumbling blocks - sometimes with me teaching, sometimes with others teaching.  In the end, I think all of us in the study group did well on the final exam, including myself - I got an A on the exam and a B in the class.

I'm embarrassed about all of the time I spent second-guessing myself - apologizing for what I knew, saying "I don't know" or "I think... " or "I could be wrong...."  I was certain I knew nothing, that I had nothing to offer.  In fact, the only reason I actually was able to teach anything is that my study partners talked me into it.  

Don't be like me. Don't make your friends drag it out of you.  It's natural to feel like an impostor, especially when you are just learning.  If you think you see something that your friends don't see yet, try to explain it to them.  If you're right, you will develop a stronger understanding of why you're right and your friends will learn something, too.  If you're wrong, you will learn from that too, and your friends may be able to teach you something.