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Fending off a triple inferiority complex in academia: an autoethnographyOlga Burlyuk * I stopped keeping a diary at the age of 12, because my 9-year-old brother would not stop reading it.The last entry I recollect -which is still buzzing in my head 20 years later -was in winter 1998 when 15-year-old Tara Lipinski won Olympic gold in figure-skating.This event threw me into what I learned much later was an "acute awareness moment".I went to our shared kids' room, sat at our shared desk and wrote down in my pink diary: "She is 15 and has already won an Olympic gold.She is 15 and has already reached the goal of her life.You [that is: me] are 12, you don't as much as have a goal, and you are nowhere near reaching it.A major waste of a life."This autoethnography is thus based on a non-journal -a very close to reality, at times exact, recollection of episodes from my professional life spanning 15 years (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018) and various academic contexts, country-, discipline-and seniority-wise.While it is a story by an emigrant, it is not a story of emigration; that one would have had to be a book.Likewise, while it is my story, it is not a story about me.It is a story of subtle, nearly invisible, structures in academia and the heavy day-to-day burden of fending off a triad of assumed, imposed and self-imposed inferiority complexes: in relation to the "center" one arrives at, in relation to the "periphery" one (never really) leaves behind, and, specifically in my case, coming from Ukraine, in relation to this "periphery's" very right to exist and be seen as a separate unit, a periphery of its own.This essay addresses the political through the personal and treats emotion as an inherent element of any human interaction -also in academia. September 2003I am a first year law student at the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", the oldest (it marked its 400 th anniversary in 2015), the most prestigious (according to various statistics and
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