Precarious identity through and after university
The identify of “student” - whether you are one, are hoping to be one, or were one - is really complicated. It was expected that I would go to university. I got good grades, I worked hard – and this meant I was deemed to be ‘university-material’.
What does that even mean? While the choices one makes to go to university are numerous, complicated and multi-faceted, being a “student” is an empty term that absorbs the preconceptions of the person using it. Terms I often hear in conjunction with “university student” are “poor”, “lazy”, “uncertain and delaying their future”. Though this seems to vary depending on the course you’ve chosen in this era where disciplines are deemed publicly to either be worthwhile or to be ‘Mickey Mouse’.
But to ‘go to university’ is not one, homogenous decision. It’s a series of decisions at the heart of working out who you are. The subject I chose felt like a reflection of my personality, a statement of what I wanted to be and the path I wanted to take in the world. Which it can literally be, considering I bore my soul in a personal statement on which my qualities and interests were judged worthy or not.
The institution I chose to go to seemed not only a reflection of who I thought I was, but also of the factors that enabled me to go there: my economic status, whether the location was accessible from the location I applied from, the course they offered, and the grades I needed.
When I went was also a reflection of where I was at on my life journey. I went straight from school, but how might my choices have changed had I been returning after one (or many) years out? How did that influence where and what I studied?
Then when I got to university, the choices I had made to define myself were queried by others who had made their own minds up about their identities and what the university choices they had made said about themselves. Despite being deemed ‘university material’, I often felt unworthy of that label when I got there. My entire degree felt like a series of high-stake personality tests: ‘what do you study?’, ‘why those two languages?’, ‘where do you come from?’. If I answered one of these questions incorrectly, I would no longer fulfil the definition I had inherited through my university choices.
Such questions surfaced parts of my identity that I didn’t realise that were important: class, race, life experiences. At my first university social, I was asked: what type of school did I go to? It felt like a test, not a social query: like if I didn’t give the right answer, I no longer fitted into the identity necessary to be at this institution. For that particular person, I clearly didn’t.
In defining myself by my own choices, not by my education, I was able to deconstruct the identity people and systems had built for me - and express my own.
But at the same time, university allows you to reinvent or sculpt yourself. My identity was limited by the experiences I’d lived and the things I’d read to date; but I also realised that just because that is what other people saw didn’t mean that was what I was. I made some other identity choices at university – positive ones – that negated those labels placed on me and allowed me to add my own. I found my societies, my friends, the modules I loved, the career that (I thought) I wanted. It was the first time in my life that I could make choices for me, and not because the school system I was in demanded them. That in turn allowed me to find my own identity labels: sporty, outgoing, traveller, kind, teacher. In defining myself by my own choices, not by my education, I was able to deconstruct the identity people and systems had built for me - and express my own.
But these new labels are seen to define what you want to be next and formed my next choices. Educator, caring, supporter. I was a good teacher and a good linguist, so that’s where I should go. I found myself staying at university, the place where I carved my identity and began to feel like myself.
When the identity you choose for yourself does not work out, who are you then?
But I found the career choices these labels had drawn me to did not suit me. They left me questioning. When the identity you choose for yourself does not work out, who are you then?
I considered the identities that had stuck. Caring. Compassionate. How could I stick by those and thereby remain true to me?
My next career choices took me away from the linguist identity I had chosen for myself at university: did that matter? It felt like it should, like I was betraying myself in not following that path I had carved. But the things that we want can change.
And I found my new choices still allowed me to remain true to myself, just in roles I had just never previously considered. To these I arrived with a new lens and my old mission: to help others deconstruct ideas of identity in higher education, and define themselves for themselves, and not by their educational experiences.
I came to rethink the labels we give students. Carer. Estranged. Mature. Disabled. Students become boxed into stereotypes that never do justice to the brilliant individual behind them. It is through helping students unpick those and through having an understanding of my own identities that I discovered something else, which has been the final precarity in my adult identity to date: AuDHD. Some contradictory words I had absentmindedly given myself suddenly clicked into place, explaining the main dualities I had struggled with in my life. Routine-driven but adrenaline-seeking; overly sensitive but sharply realistic; outwardly quiet but inwardly shouting. Suddenly I was transported back to that initial verdict that I was university material, and how much went into that. Would others have felt that way if they had seen the enormous efforts and challenges I was facing to be that kind of person?
At the same time, who I had become at university was even more cemented by these new findings. While initially earth shattering, these discoveries didn’t change who I was. They complimented what I had unearthed about myself while being able to flourish at university.
Humans are a beautiful and complex mixture of different identities.
Working with students, and having ‘found myself’ at university, I see that our identities are ever evolving. Three or four years is a long time, but a useful time to get to know ourselves better. Educating others has taught me new things about myself, and there a few more descriptors on my list (positive ones). Humans are a beautiful and complex mixture of different identities. It’s important that we acknowledge that before we allow perceived identities to shape how we interact with others around us in higher education.
It should not matter who you are to anyone but yourself. We spend our lives in our own company; so own your narrative and your identity labels. Express yourself in university, and let the ways you express yourself help guide you into what you want to do next. And accept that these change, and that’s ok. Life is precarious - but growth rarely happens on solid ground.
So who am I? I am not a product of your expectations, but the ones I have of myself. Take some time to know me, and you’ll find out.
