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