The Problem with the Professional 'Origin Story'

 Many of us may have read, or written, a story about overcoming adversity and achieving success. The narrative of these tales tracks a familiar format, which can be communicated through books, talks, media profiles, and more commonly an inspirational post on a platform like LinkedIn.  The story opens by introducing the protagonist's achievement, then details the many obstacles that they had to overcome in their journey to success. They usually talk about how they nearly gave up, they believed in themselves and focused on their goals, they persevered, overcame the obstacles and achieved success.

These stories are often heart-warming and inspiring to read. When the author, or subject, is someone you know well it also marks a deserved celebration of their accomplishments.  Having recently received a tenured job offer at a world-leading university, I was very tempted to post one of these too. In it, I could detail how I worked full-time while studying my undergraduate degree because I couldn't afford the fees, how I was initially rejected for PhD because 'no one had heard of the university' I attended, how it took years to get published because psychologists weren't as interested in social inequality as they are today, how I was told to quit by almost everyone I knew when having children during PhD, how I was only offered precarious teaching-intensive contracts for years before being offered this role.  

The problem with presenting a highlight reel of misery, followed with a narrative of how you overcame the odds by working harder, is that it ultimately reinforces the idea that we live in a meritocratic society. It sustains neoliberal ideals that shifts the responsibility of systemic inequalities to individuals, and ignores how much easier it is for people from different backgrounds to achieve the same outcomes.

People who have risen out of adverse circumstances are used as exemplars of hope, and more often used to justify the 'efficiency' of fundamentally unequal socioeconomic systems.

The people that manage to overcome adversity are often reluctant to acknowledge the level of luck, or differential demographic characteristics, they possess relative to others who are unable to achieve the same outcomes. Telling a single parent who is already working 60hrs a week at a minimum wage job that 'if they only believe in themselves and work harder they will achieve their ends' demonstrates a complete blindness to the inequitable reality of life. Those of us who do reach positions of power need to do more to address the precarity and exploitation that is so deeply embedded within our economic and social systems - even if it means that we have to give up some of the adulation that follows our origin story.