Why I am here - Parker

Hello! My name is Parker Chase and I’m an advertising strategist, barista, surfer, skater, and proud hedgehog dad.

I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of The Adequacy Project because I care deeply about making sure that others know that they belong and are wanted in whatever space they are in. I personally have dealt with these feelings in my own life and I know how important it is to feel valid and understood by your peers. I’ve dealt with feelings of inadequacy in a few major areas of my life, namely family, work, and school, so I feel I can relate to many of the people who will come to the Adequacy project for help.

Feeling out of place or like you don’t belong in your family or in any other close relationship like that is something I understand very deeply. As a son and sibling, I have very different beliefs and a different lifestyle from the rest of my family, so it often feels like I am the “other” whenever I am with them. It’s a difficult feeling to come to terms with and is a hard situation to give advice about, given how everyone’s family and relationship dynamics are different, but I know in my heart that everyone belongs and should have a place in their family.

I have also felt inadequate and unqualified in the workplace before and it’s incredibly hard. When I first started in school I was studying Finance and I landed a job at an impact investing fund. My peers were incredible,, we had some of the top students from BYU, Oxford, Capetown, Harvard, and Michigan all together 9-5 every day making investments with a lot of money. Every day I felt like I wasn’t smart or talented enough to have worthwhile suggestions, so I made myself small and hid in the background. Even when I had good ideas, I tended to keep them too myself because in my mind nothing I could say would be worthwhile. This made my experience at this job so much less fulfilling. I learned less, I spent my time worrying instead of making connections, and I hurt my own perception of myself. If I had just understood at the time that I got the same job in the same interview process that everyone else did, was working on the same deals, meeting with the same people, I could have just made the most of it and learned that I earned my spot and belonged.

My greatest feelings of inadequacy currently come from being in the BYU advertising program, like most of my peers at the Adequacy Project. I’m in a very exclusive, difficult to get into program with some of the most hard-working, talented people I’ve ever met. Every day when I’m in the lab I have to stop myself from looking at my peers around me and thinking wow, they’re so much more talented, passionate, or hard-working than I am. It may be true, there will always be someone more talented than me or more driven, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t belong just as much as they do. I worked my butt off to get into the program and I belong there even when I think I don’t.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point in my life where I don’t feel inadequate in any aspect of my life, but I’m working towards it. I hope that this project can help others do the same, because it’s so important for your progress and your happiness to know that you belong and you deserve the good things you have.