7 - Making the garments fit: transitions to a better place

Summary

Being an academic was something I wanted to be before I understood what it fully meant. I knew that I loved learning and I felt at home within educational settings. As a child, my performance in school reflected this, but there was something else that was reflected too – my love for expression. I was always the child in parents’ evening whose parents were told: ‘She performs exceptionally in her classes, but she talks too much.’ I laugh when I think about this because I now realise that, as well as an academic, I was a performing artist in the making. Social engagement for leisure was something I never sacrificed in early education, hence it is ironic that I now have a PhD place in Cognitive Neuroscience with a focus on social cognition and engagement. However, my initial inspirations did not come from a neuroscientific background; my interest in science stemmed from my love of performing arts, specifically theatre.

I stepped into secondary school with this love for theatre; however, it was there where I began to understand that the merging of science and arts was not straightforward. The curriculum prioritised ‘core subjects’ over ‘creative subjects’ and, therefore, having interdisciplinary subject interests as a high achieving student was not highly encouraged. I remember facing an immense conflict between the science and drama department's extracurricular clubs. It was then I knew that I would have to take the tailoring process of what I wanted my academic pathway to look like into my own hands because I did not want to sacrifice one field for the other.

One interesting factor to note as a Black student was that this conflict was not a racial one, as my drama and science teachers were all Black. I did not ponder this at the time. It was only upon recent reflection in conversations about early academia that I realised that my secondary school had good Black and Brown staff representation from the headteacher level down, and this diversity was seen across gender as well. Experiencing a diverse teaching staff was the norm for me but, of course, this pattern was not maintained in further or higher education.