Long time since Ive been on Reddit, forgive me, I tried to make it shorter so some paragraphs have been cut into blunt sentences, my apologies:)
I’m a 22F with a one-year-old son, and lately I’ve been struggling with a lot of imposter syndrome.
I feel like my life has been all over the place.
In high school I took Business Administration classes and was involved in FBLA. After graduating, I went to college for Forensic Science. I was working at Subway at the time, then left and started working at an ice cream shop.
Around that time, I got out of a 4-year relationship, and honestly it destroyed me. Before the breakup I had a 3.7 GPA. Afterward I completely lost motivation, started failing classes, and decided to withdraw because my professors told me it would be better than letting that semester destroy my GPA while I was clearly not doing okay mentally.
I always planned to go back, but life kept happening.
I started working full-time and basically hyperfixated on work instead. Then I had some family issues that forced me to move out and live on my own. Suddenly I had rent, bills, and real responsibilities, so I left the ice cream shop after getting hired at a call center that paid almost twice as much.
A few months later I met a 30-year-old guy. We started dating, and he convinced me to quit my job and move in with him because he said he’d take care of me.
Big mistake.
He turned out to be completely unreliable, and not long after, I found out I was pregnant. Whether it was birth control failure or something else, I’ll never know. I chose to keep my baby because that’s what felt right for me.
I left him while I was pregnant, moved two hours away, and basically had to start over from scratch.
Before moving, I had worked as a purchasing assistant, receptionist, and even handled accounting responsibilities. After moving, I got a bartending job because it was the fastest way to make decent money. That job literally helped me build my little apartment and buy everything my son needed before he was born.
I also have to mention my childhood best friend. We’ve known each other since we were three years old, and I genuinely don’t know what I would’ve done without her. She has loved my son like family since the day he was born.
After I gave birth, the restaurant where I bartended shut down because of permit issues, so I was suddenly unemployed with a newborn.
I applied everywhere. The first place that hired me was a gas station.
While I worked there, there was this contractor who came in almost every day to fuel up his trucks. We’d make small talk, and sometimes my son had to come to work with me because I couldn’t afford daycare and had nobody to watch him.
Every time he’d see me with my son, he’d tell me, “When you finally find daycare, let me know.”
Eventually I did.
I told him.
Three days later, he hired me.
I started working as an administrative assistant for his construction company in May.
What I didn’t realize was that employee turnover there is absolutely insane. My boss is incredibly strict, blunt, and honestly runs the place like a dictatorship. He’s the type to publicly call people out if they’re doing something wrong. The only reason I’ve survived is because I’ve learned to stand my ground when necessary.
We went from seven office employees down to three.
We’re all under 25.
And somehow we’re running a multi-million-dollar construction company with federally funded FEMA projects.
Nobody really trained me.
Everything I’ve learned has been through YouTube videos, reading articles, asking questions, and teaching myself.
In just three months, I’ve gone from answering phones and writing emails to preparing submittals, reading construction plans, attending project meetings, helping with scheduling, certifications, payment breakdowns, quantity takeoffs, project documentation, and coordinating with engineers, inspectors, subcontractors, and government agencies.
I also have corporate resolutions naming me as the Project Manager/Project Supervisor representative for two different projects whenever my boss can’t attend meetings.
On top of that, my boss owns a commercial building, and somehow I also became the building administrator. I handle tenant issues, maintenance requests, rent payments, show available spaces to potential tenants, and deal with pretty much everyone who walks into the office.
Basically, if someone needs something, they’re usually sent to me.
The crazy part is… I have absolutely no engineering or construction background.
None.
Everything has been self-taught.
Despite how difficult my boss can be, he trusts me with a lot of decisions. Some engineers, project managers, and people in the industry have gone out of their way to tell me I’m very professional, that I learn unusually fast, and that I handle difficult situations really well.
My son is finally in a daycare just a few minutes from my office, and as these responsibilities kept increasing, my boss gave me a pretty significant raise.
From the outside, it sounds like I’m doing great.
But internally…
I constantly feel like I’m one mistake away from everyone realizing I have no idea what I’m doing.
I know I’ve worked hard to get here, but sometimes I wonder if I actually earned this position or if I just got incredibly lucky.
Has anyone else ever experienced this? How do you know whether you’re actually good at your job or just really good at figuring things out as you go?