How to navigate choppy, elitist waters as a working-class academic

Not all Russell Group universities are the same and they are "elite" rather than "elitist". I have heard this stuck record since I was a student in the 1980s. Most people of my age are only one step away from "working class", whatever that means and were usually the first in their family to attend university. It may be the different subject backgrounds (me: Engineering and the writer: Law) but I do not recognise the picture painted. I work in a department that is very diverse in many ways. However, in academic life, one has to enter the country of the educated that has no borders and also transcend so-called "cultural" identities (including class) to belong to a modern and vibrant community.

Is there actually such a thing as 'social class' or is it a myth perpetuated by some who use it as an excuse or even as a badge of pride? "Look at me, I'm working class and I've achieved x. y. z."... when for most people, achieving x, y, z, is an accomplishment of itself without adding any further gloss. If you want to live the life of the mind, it is the mind that matters, not the extraneous baggage/labels you fancy hanging on the body in which it is contained. I still remember a conversation when, younger and fitter, I ran the local Army Cadet Force unit. Chatting with a group of cadets, they brought up one of their schoolfriends, whom they described as 'posh'. Their reasoning: she went to a private school and her parents had been to university. I grinned at them. "I went to a private school and both my parents went to university, in fact, so did I. Do you think I'm posh?" "Oh no, Sergeant," they replied. "You go to Cadets!"

Paragraphs of navel-gazing 'throat clearing' and then we find the research results: Very likely you will soon discover that you are not the only academic in such a situation, and maybe you will soon find yourself mentoring and supporting others too.