Following a confusing lecture on AI development, Jacob Smith (CC ‘24) realized that his attempts to conquer imposter syndrome were failing because he did not have enough skill or talent to even have the syndrome in the first place.
“I was reading through the Wikipedia article on imposter syndrome during my Advanced Linear Algebra lecture, and I just realized that for me to actually have it, I’d need my self-doubt to be unsupported in reality,” Smith said. “‘I’ve just been showing up for classes that I know nothing about and trying to pretend I’d been studying in the field since middle school.”
Smith, a prospective Photojournalism major , had been attending classes related to the Intelligent Systems Track for the past two years at Columbia. After receiving a letter of acceptance from Columbia that praised his “dedication to machine learning,” Smith assumed that he had been assigned to change his academic pursuits to center on Computer Science.
“Sure, it wasn’t my original plan- I mean, I’ve never programmed in my life- but if this is the background Columbia accepted me for, I’m sure as hell not gonna deny it,” Smith whispered to our Federalist reporter during a seminar on Natural Language Processing. “I guess I never really had imposter syndrome, I just turned out to actually be an imposter.”
Smith was last seen asking his professor why Columbia is located in New York when his letter of acceptance clearly described it as the “Columbia College of Missouri.”
