How It Feels to Be a Young Ham in a Roomful of Experts

I spent a week this July at the World Radiosport Team Championship (WRTC), one of the biggest gatherings of the world’s absolute best contesters. Everyone there had put in an immense amount of time and effort to qualify as a competitor or be a referee. It was truly the textbook definition of “a roomful of experts.” Being there as a young ham brought on a number of emotions, ranging from feeling intimidated by the group to feeling like an integral part it.

In the end, the experience was very positive.

Being in a roomful of experts as a young ham is a strange combination of excitement and the internally aching “please don’t call on me” feeling. You realize that you have access to troves of knowledge but aren’t quite sure yet how to acquire it without asking a question that you worry might make you look dumb—but you still want to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Feeling this slight anxiety of not wanting to look like you don’t belong or not wanting to ask the wrong question doesn’t mean you’re not in the right place. It just means that you’re new (at least newer) to a group, and that feeling is usually temporary.

I have a few tips for young hams who feel like they’re struggling to take advantage of this opportunity, since I’ve experienced it many times.

• Aways ask the questions that come to your mind. You may feel like it’s a “dumb” question, but that doesn’t mean it is. Most of the time, experts won’t judge you for wanting to learn more about something that they’re passionate about—they just like sharing what they know and have learned.
• Find a group of people who are in the same (or at least similar) position as you—young hams getting involved with the hobby who are still not experts. You’ll be able to learn together and support each other through the ups and downs of the process.
• Let yourself be inspired by the experts around you rather than comparing yourself to them. Use their knowledge and tips to motivate yourself to improve your skills rather than comparing yourself to them and letting yourself feel like you’re behind. There is no “copy and paste” timeline for getting your license, upgrading, or getting more involved with a specific part of the hobby. Going at your own pace and enjoying the process is more important than being the best at what you’re doing.

A big part of amateur radio for many young hams is ending up in rooms you don’t feel 100% qualified to be in. The trick is to remind yourself that you got there somehow, and that you don’t need to be the best in the room to deserve to be there. When you’re surrounded by the experts of the hobby, it can feel quite intimidating if you’re not performing at the same level, but you should consider how long you’ve been involved in amateur radio compared to those with many more years of experience.

Most of us remember our first time trying to run a pileup: sitting there nervously fumbling callsigns, mishearing things, and frantically trying to log all of the contacts. But we tend to forget that this is how all of us started, no matter how skilled we are now. When we surround ourselves with experts, we tend to raise our expectations but forget how far we’ve already come toward reaching them.

Here’s my best advice to young hams who feel like perhaps they haven’t worked hard enough on something or done enough to improve their skills: Remember how far you’ve come from being a new ham with only a Technician license and HT in hand.

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