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The question

What is the biggest professional obstacle you have faced?

Originally asked

The American Academy of Achievement, to its honourees, its oral-history interviews

The Academy of Achievement repeatedly asks honorees to identify a major professional obstacle or challenge and describe confronting it.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.

Historian; twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I have generally had few setbacks and few obstacles. I have been very fortunate in that things have been handed to me rather than my going out after them. There are a few roads that I didn’t take that I maybe could have. When I was a graduate student, maybe a second-year graduate student, I worked frequently at the Illinois State Library in Springfield, and one day, the director of that library called me into his office and said, “I have some news to tell you that is still very hush-hush, but I’m resigning from this job. I’m going to the Chicago Historical Society, and I’m going to recommend that you be appointed in my place.

Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1 April 2005 source ↗

Others on this question

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Hilary Swank Actor
I realized that the biggest obstacle was my mind. It was the biggest obstacle, and if I could get out of the way of myself, I would grow. So every time I had that attitude, I changed it, and I’d say, “You can. Today you can, and take it one day at a time, and today, I’m going to get up and I’m not going to think about the other six days of this week. I’m going to get up right now, and I’m going to go to the gym, and I’m going to learn about my boxing, and I’m going to be in the moment.” You know, in anything, you hit a wall, and then you have to break through it, and I just had to get out of my own way.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Los Angeles, California, 1 April 2006 source ↗
Mohamed ElBaradei Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997-2009; Nobel Peace Prize 2005
No. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out quite that way. At that time, everybody was euphoric that we will have a new world order, you know, a world order that does not rely on nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. ... We still have thousands of warheads in existence. We still have more than 20 — 30 countries relying on nuclear deterrence for their own survival.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 2006 source ↗
Clive James Critic, essayist, poet and broadcaster
What I’ve got doesn’t hurt. I’ve been lucky. The treatment has been benign. I don’t know if I could concentrate if I was in pain. I’ve never had to stop.
Recorded Robert McCrum, Interview at James's home in Cambridge, published in the Observer New Review, The Observer, 15 March 2015 source ↗
John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
More than anything else, I had to combat the barriers, and we tore down those barriers. I just had to set a sail against the wind, those strong winds, to end segregation and racial discrimination, but somehow, in some way, I didn’t let those barriers keep me down.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗

More from David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.

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Question Which writers or artists have most influenced your work? Taste & recommendation
Professor Randall was a great advisor and a great mentor. He taught me, I think, in the best possible way. He was not a brilliant lecturer. His courses were fairly pedestrian. I didn’t think his seminars were particularly interesting. But working with him on a one-to-one basis as his assistant, I think that’s the way one has to learn to be a historian. That is, he was writing, and if he needed some particular reference, I had to go find it and get it. If he was writing, he wanted everything checked meticulously over and over again. So I had to take the manuscript over to the library and check it all out. So that by working closely with him, I got to see, first of all, a lot of the library and its extensive holdings, but I got, even more important, to understand what a scholar is about. It is about care. It is about “pains-taking.” It is about judgment as well as it’s about very skillful writing. He was an excellent writer as well. So in that sense, Professor Randall and Mrs. Randall shaped my future career.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 19 October 2007 source ↗

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