Opportunity is seized by you not your origin

[Applause]

good afternoon everyone

i’ll start by acknowledging that the

land on which you’re all meeting today

belongs to the ghana people the original

custodians of the land

on which the university of adelaide’s

main campuses are built

and from afar i will pay my respects to

their elders past

present and emerging my name is claudia

paul

and i am from broken hill in far west

new south wales

i’m a first nations australian a medical

doctor who trained at the university of

adelaide

and currently a lab-based researcher

doing a phd

on a rhodes scholarship in oxford in the

uk

but if someone told me 10 years ago that

this is what i’d be doing

i’m not sure that i’d believe them i

want you to keep in mind that this is

but one story

and the experiences that have shaped my

worldview

and i challenge you to consider what has

shaped yours

while studying in a global pandemic and

spending 10

of the last 12 months in various forms

of restriction and lockdown

the irony of giving a talk on limitless

change is not lost on me

to set the scene i’m in a lounge room

over sixteen thousand kilometers away

presenting to two phones trying to

connect

at a time where there is so much

disconnect i’m a writer woman

and grew up in a small country town i

completed high school there

before moving to adelaide for medical

school i moved again

to work as a doctor in newcastle i was

quick to set my sights

on a career in surgery but was abruptly

confronted with the idea of studying

overseas

whether this was possible and whether it

even made sense to me

at that point in my career and i’m

telling you this because when reflecting

on my own story

there were a few key moments where the

trajectory for what i thought i was

capable of

and what may have been possible for me

was challenged

and changed and by doing so i can

highlight the perceptions that we have

about indigenous students and their

achievements both in australia and

globally

and the invisible ceiling that often

gets imposed upon them

in high school i was the kid that was

all right at sport

but not considered particularly academic

generally

when we when people look at students

from rural and remote

and indigenous backgrounds they inflict

a cap on their potential

either intentionally or unintentionally

some changes have been made since i went

through this system

however these changes have been slow and

so far

deeply insufficient too often i hear

stories

mine included when a careers advisor or

teacher has said

you should set the bar lower when

they’re hired into positions to give

advice

but when you ask about how to apply to a

program that you feel passionately about

you are told that this is not achievable

for you

what they’re actually saying is this is

not achievable

for someone of your background as an

aboriginal person

or as a student from a rural or remote

background and this has a big

impact and for many can really drive

self-doubt

we need to move away from a situation

where someone

tells you what you can’t do based on

what they haven’t

or based on what they haven’t seen

people in your position do

before because of the glass ceiling

you may be surprised by this but there

are currently 360 australians studying

in oxford

so actually my story may not seem so

unique

more importantly there is a growing

number of indigenous australians

studying at oxford

and that’s just one university there are

comparable stories at the rival

cambridge

and ivy league universities across the

us

despite excelling at university

unfortunately indigenous students are

often faced with a lack of acceptance

for earning their seat at the table

these same students are referred to

as being resilient as if it were a

compliment

as if what they’ve achieved has been the

exception

resilience comes about in response to

overcoming difficulty

a process of adapting in the face of

adversity and sources of stress

so when we acknowledge the resilience of

a person we actually need to address the

situations

in which they have worked through and

look for opportunities for structural

change

rather than patting someone on the back

for essentially coping

within a system that should have better

supported them and while i’m grateful

for the support i’ve received

in getting where i am it has also been a

product

of hard work grit and perseverance

language is important avoid saying

things like you’re so resilient

you’re so lucky but you’re so young or

it’s not fair that you this is actually

insulting given the amount of work

that has gone into achieving whatever it

is that person has achieved

and actually these types of comments say

a lot more about who they’re coming from

than about the person they’re directed

to these comments imply

that the speaker didn’t think you were

capable or that you shouldn’t be doing

what you’re doing or that someone gave

you a hand up

rather than you having worked hard for

it so if you’ve ever made a comment like

this

think about why you made it pulling your

name out of a heart

by random chance is luck being awarded a

merit-based position

is not luck we need to question the

biases within the systems that

perpetuate inequity and inequality in

education

i urge you to reflect on the privileges

and the challenges

that you may have experienced during

your own journey and how together

we can create positive change in the

systems we have benefited from

as we’ve been a part of these systems we

may also also

identify their pitfalls given what we

know now

what can we do to create change

i want to share some important

statistics the highlight

what i’ve discussed so far university’s

australia indigenous strategy report

suggested that university applications

from indigenous applicants

have increased in recent years but the

disparity

in degree completion between indigenous

and non-indigenous

australians was 30 this has little to do

with merit

because indigenous students are being

accepted into their respective courses

with the grades required to do so but

within the higher education system

they are not making it out the other end

and we need to ask why

often universities in australia

implemented enrollment targets for

indigenous applicants

without sufficient support structures to

ensure their success

throughout their program of study but if

we look at this from a global

perspective

applications from indigenous students

applying to top tier universities in the

us

and uk have also steadily increased in

the last 10 years

of australians studying overseas more

than 3 percent

are indigenous compared to the 1 to 2

percent

reported for domestic indigenous

students at universities within

australia

a report by the aurora education

foundation found

that of those applying to leading

universities internationally

94 of applicants were accepted

and of those that chose to take up that

course of study

had a completion rate of 100

so what are we doing differently in

australia to not achieve

higher completion i believe a lot of

this

has to do with adequate support

structures ensuring students can achieve

their fullest potential

by providing them with sufficient means

to do so

in high school there were programs

designed to bridge the literacy and

numeracy gaps

but these were not tailored and they

were not opt in

so being taken out of class for reading

or maths or writing

for me actually did more harm than good

at 14 or 15 years old i had to really

advocate

out of a situation that was supposedly

designed to better support my learning

it is more important to individualize

support around learning

by asking what the student might need

rather than approaching

all students with a blanket solution

attending my physics or chemistry class

was far more beneficial

than taking me out of class for a

reading group ultimately putting me in a

position

where i needed to then catch up on the

coursework i’d missed as a result

for the past decade i’ve accepted

opportunities that presented themselves

and then tried to just adapt to these

new situations

sometimes gracefully and other times the

swan above water

who was paddling like crazy under the

surface

so i’ll fast forward to my time in the

uk in my first year oxford

where i studied a masters of

international health and tropical

medicine

i focused and was passionate about

understanding healthcare delivery

in under-resourced areas and the changes

required

in these settings to improve health

outcomes

during my time it was the conversations

that occurred outside of the classroom

rather than within it and these inspired

and challenged me

resulted in both rich discussion and

debate

and although my focus when returning to

australia is

addressing the disparity in surgical

outcomes between indigenous

and non-indigenous australians there is

a lot that can be learnt

from conversations regarding other

population groups

but across all corners of the globe

the greatest benefit that i had here is

to be encouraged to explore

beyond my degree program to lean into

conversations

that i was left less familiar and this

can have a really profound impact on our

own work

it is only here that i’ve been really

able to appreciate its importance

and i am now in my third year oxford and

honestly

i feel like less of an imposter here

than i ever did in medical school

here i’m not othered the same way i was

there

in my first days i wasn’t asked where

are you from

in a way that suggested i didn’t belong

it didn’t matter if i grew up in the

country

or if i didn’t attend private school or

that i didn’t have doctors as parents

and i realized that the story was that

was being written for me at 18 years old

was all the things that i wasn’t or

didn’t have

rather than what i did we are all

brainwashed to fear failure

before my rhodes application my main

thought was what if i don’t get it

i’m sure we’ve all had a similar thought

when applying to uni

or jobs or scholarships but reflecting

on this

what i should have been giving more

thought to was what if i do

in the uk we finally turned a corner of

what we all hope

is the third and final lockdown for this

pandemic

and while australia’s experience of the

pandemic has been strikingly different

to that of the uk i hope some

commonalities prevail

we have been forced to slow down we’ve

had to be honest with ourselves

more intent in our interactions and

question more deeply the work that we do

and what it is that we want to be doing

the pandemic has pushed us to work in

ways that we

would not have previously thought normal

where we enter a time of hybrid learning

and working and the balance between

volume versus value

while this panda pandemic stopped

innumerable things from happening

there was still plenty happening and we

can take forward our new ways of working

and learning

that complement the more traditional

working practices

so i’ll leave you with this firstly say

yes to things

and then work out how you’re going to

get them done

saying yes to opportunities you might

just find yourself

doing a tedx talk to an audience of n

equals zero

from your lounge room find what drives

your intrinsic motivation

and lastly remember there are different

paths to the same destination

thank you