I don’t know if this counts as a confession, not really. More like… a secret I’m keeping, I guess. I feel like I’m walking around with this giant, ridiculous secret stitched into my skin and everyone can see it but no one is saying anything. Or maybe they can’t see it at all. That’s probably it. I don't know. I got this promotion, sort of. It’s a huge deal. A multi-million dollar renovation project downtown. You know, the kind of project you dream about when you’re drawing up those impossibly perfect designs in architecture school, convinced you’re going to change the world with your vision. I’m the lead architect on it. Me. The junior architect who still feels like she’s faking it half the time. (Okay, all the time.) And the problem, the actual secret, is that I… I don’t really know how to use the software. Not properly. Not for something like this. I can do the basic stuff, of course. Draft floor plans, elevations, render a few perspectives. But this project? It’s massive. It has so many moving parts, so many different teams collaborating, so much data to manage. And there are these advanced functions, these collaboration tools, these — I don’t even know what they’re called. Macros? Scripts? I don't know. Things that everyone else seems to just… intuitively understand. They just click around and things happen, and I’m sitting there, my hand hovering over the mouse, trying to remember if I should use ‘array’ or ‘duplicate’ for this particular element. (It's embarrassing, even writing it down.) I’ve been trying to learn it on my own, after hours. I stay late, long after everyone else has gone home, watching YouTube tutorials with the volume super low so no one walking past my office would hear. I bought a subscription to some online course, but it’s so… dry. And it assumes a baseline knowledge I just don’t have. Or maybe I *should* have. I don't know. I feel like I missed a day, or a week, or a whole semester, and now everyone else is speaking a different language. The worst part is the meetings. We have these weekly check-ins, and everyone’s pulling up their screens, showing off their progress. They're making these incredibly complex adjustments in real-time, rotating models, demonstrating clash detection, updating schedules with a few quick keystrokes. And I just… nod. I make vague comments like, "Ah, yes, excellent integration," or "I appreciate the efficiency of that workflow." I sound like an idiot. I know I do. And I feel this flush spread across my neck, hoping no one notices how stiff my smile is, how my eyes keep darting to their screen, trying to memorize the sequence of clicks they just made. Just yesterday, Michael — he’s one of the senior architects, probably senses my incompetence, I think — he asked me directly, "So, for the HVAC overlay, are you going to run that with the automated clash detection or do a manual review first to streamline the process?" And I just stared at him. Blankly. I think I blinked. My mind was just static. I mumbled something about… "optimizing for clarity." God, I probably sounded like a corporate robot. He just raised an eyebrow. I could feel my face burning. I wanted to just disappear, right there. It’s making me so angry. Angry at myself, mostly. I worked so hard to get here. Spent years in school, barely sleeping, drinking too much coffee, pushing myself to be good enough. To be *more* than good enough. And now, I’m here, at the precipice of this huge opportunity, and I’m paralyzed by something so fundamental. Something I should have mastered years ago. It feels like a betrayal, almost. A betrayal of all that effort, all that sacrifice. And I’m angry at the situation, I guess. Why wasn’t this taught more thoroughly? Why is there this assumption that everyone just… picks it up? I’m a creative person, I think. I love the design, the aesthetics, the way light plays in a space. I love sketching, feeling the pencil on the paper, the tactile nature of creating something. This… this software feels like a cold, unfeeling barrier between my ideas and their realization. It’s like I have to learn to be a programmer just to be an architect now. I don’t know what I’m going to do. The deadline for the first major submission is in three weeks. And I’m still fumbling with basic commands. I lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, my brain just running through all the ways I could mess this up. All the ways I could be exposed. It’s a multi-million dollar project. What if I cause a delay? What if I make a mistake that costs the company thousands? Or millions? I could lose my job. I could be… blacklisted, probably. The thought just twists in my gut. I can’t afford that. My student loans are already… a lot. And my parents… they're so proud. I can't let them down. I just can't. I just… I feel like such a fraud. Every day I walk into that office, putting on this brave face, pretending to be confident, pretending to know exactly what I’m doing. And inside, I’m screaming. I’m genuinely terrified. And so, so angry. I don’t know. I just needed to write it out, I guess. Get it out of my head for a little while. Even though I know it’ll just be right back there when I close my eyes.