“Not Too Late to Take the Sanitation Test”: Notes of a Non-Gifted Academic from the Working Class

Working-class academic narratives reveal a number of common themes, like dual estrangement and internalized class conflict. A less popularized motif is the bookish child who is catapulted out of her working-class origins. But some working-class academics, like myself, were not academically ambitious as children. I am a nontraditional working-class academic, and my distance from narratives of “gifted” ascent may actuallybring me closer to my students.