The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (104)

The value of being the imposter….

Think of this blog as Cape Town, part two.

As I prepare these words, I am racked with impostor syndrome, and my dial is at 100%.

I'm preparing four lectures to be delivered over three days: two on the main podium at the congress, one is a workshop, and one is an ITI study club. I am absolutely convinced that they will be terrible, and I may well be asked to leave after the first lecture.

During the opening ceremony, I sat next to Vincent Fehmer (he is a lovely guy, and we are pals, and he's coming to teach with us in January).

He's probably the most famous dental technician in the world and certainly one of the most renowned circuit lecturers in the world, travelling everywhere.

He has sat to my left, absolutely calm and relaxed.

This is probably a pretty low-key event for him.

Not so much for me.

The value of impostor syndrome, though, is that it focuses your mind to try to be as good as you can, and so, I gave up the wine tour of the Eastern Cape today to sit in my hotel room and go over and over my lectures again and again, tinkering and reformatting and adding and subtracting, even though, the way I talk to people, I never remember what I say, and I never say what I prepare.

It's kind of like a safety net. It says I'm worthy to stand up because I've put in dozens and dozens of hours for 45 minutes.

Despite all of this, it's such an enormous privilege, and as usually happens in these circumstances, I will step onto the stage in a whirlwind of amnesia, and I will step back off with no idea how it actually went and, but just glad that I managed to get through it without having tomatoes thrown at me.

I'll share the experiences here because it's always worth remembering that these blogs are a letter to myself to read back later when I'm in the nursing home, unable to move, only able to read.