There seems little doubt that this summer has had more than its fair share of sporting highlights for the UK: the agonising near-miss of Euro 2020, the impressive medal haul of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and Emma Raducanu’s extraordinary win of the US Open, to name but a few. And yet rarely have we become quite so aware of the pressures facing sportsmen and women and the impact those pressures inevitably have on their mental health. This was perhaps epitomised by Naomi Osaka’s unexpected withdrawal from Wimbledon, ostensibly due to her contractual requirement to attend media debriefings after each match and the sense of intrusion she felt as a result. For someone who might identify as an introvert, a career in tennis must have seemed an obvious choice, with little expectation of social interaction, and yet success had brought with it an uncomfortable level of public interest and media scrutiny, creating a potential internal conflict.
It is a story that is only too familiar to me; indeed, it was my own tendency towards introversion that fuelled my original decision to pursue a career as an academic scientist. Working in a laboratory to explore the mechanisms underlying autoimmune disease and transplant rejection seemed a safe option at the time with limited requirement for public performance of any kind. And yet, as I progressed in my career, so I found myself delivering lectures to hundreds of Oxford medical students often numerous times each week, an audience not renowned for its reticence in commenting on my style, content and presentation! Furthermore, I began receiving requests for radio interviews and invitations to deliver keynote presentations at conferences around the world, culminating in the terrifying prospect of addressing world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a surreal experience captured in perpetuity by the media! To say that such an experience was uncomfortable for a card-carrying introvert would be an understatement of epic proportions!
I have often thought how interesting it would be to explore how often individuals’ choice of career path proves to be at odds with their underlying personality. Such an uncomfortable mismatch undoubtedly contributes to individuals becoming progressively estranged from their true selves through the expectation placed upon them to perform in ways that would normally feel alien. The culmination of such an erosion of the true self may, on occasions, lead to a crisis of identity, a sense of no longer knowing who one truly is. And yet for others, the pressure to conform can be strangely liberating, providing the incentive to explore beyond one’s normal comfort zone. For me there are no regrets: 30 years in academia provided experiences that would otherwise have been inaccessible to a die-hard introvert, to say nothing of a wealth of stories to tell future grandchildren!