Doubting one's abilities
Had quite a rough session at my new youth club last night which made me ponder on my abilities to engage with young people. It's quite hard to seperate a bad session from bad judgement calls or poor planning. On the whole, I don't think my skills (or indeed the skills of my colleagues) were to blame. We have a new youth club, in a rough area with very little equipment- it was enough to lead to a challenging evening. For new recruits, my fellow youth workers on the project are great- they seemed undaunted and worked really well.
I feel like sometime soon I'm going to be "found out" that I'm not actually a good youth worker and that they'll chuck me out of my new job for being a fraud! After talking to Julian, it seems that he thinks along similar lines. I guess we all doubt our abilities and when we have skills that come easily to us and that seem like second nature, it is hard to believe that they are highly developed and highly sort after skills.
Looking forward to Friday's session which is altogether calmer...
posted by Helsalata @ 9:37 am
6 comments
6 Comments:
not sure I said I doubted your abilities ...
the thing is, you need to take encouragement from others around you - look back at comments you've had from people, do people generally trust you to do a job or do they avoid you? Are people sorry to see you leave or genuinely pleased to see you?
and you can't make a judgement from one dodgy session. you have a new job - no one said it was supposed to be easy.
I read it as helen saying that you doubt your abilities at times too joolian.
I admire your ability to keep going even when you think you can't do it...
Yeah what the Sparkly one said! You only really know what is going on in your own mind so it surprised me to find out that everyone thinks they are incompetant! The important thing is to contextualise it. As far as the Wednesday session was concerned, it didn't really make me re-evaluate my abilities, it just was the first difficult session I had in some time. Nothing in particular triggers my "I'm a complete fraud and I have no idea why I'm in this job" thoughts that I get every now and again, it's just my state of mind that determines how I deal with that once I get it...
actually, these days i'm worried my new job-share other half is going to show mw up for a complete fraud!
make sure you ask for support grom the team, we're always happy to help, or at least to make sympathetic noises.
cheers
Naomi
"or at least to make sympathetic noises."
lol - I need someone sitting on me shoulder doing that all day ;)
That'll be God then! ;-)
And I doubt I'll be showing you up Naomi! You have already been a District Youth Worker for North Norfolk so you "know the ropes". But thank you for the support.
Things are fine- I suppose I do have a tendency to express doubts on here which make me seem like a nervous wreck but that isn't the case!
I am enjoying the job- I like the fact that people aren't harrassed and made to feel like they are defrauding the organisation. People are really friendly too. Even Wenesday night was OK (although I have to ring up the centre manager on Monday and explain why some of the disco lights and clock are broken!)
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