Sunday, October 10, 2021

Taking the Next Step


Hello friends,
It's always a bit difficult to restart a conversation after a pause, isn't it? So let me jump right in, without a long introduction. We're old friends, after all. Thanks to blogging, you've known me for the past eight years. You've literally witnessed my little kid growing up. She was still in elementary school back in 2013 when I started this blog. This year, she graduated from school and started college. I'm often asked what she chose to study. Well, there is no simple answer to it. College education is very different here compared to mine back home in Russia in the 1990s. We had to choose our professional direction right away, and pretty much from day one, we knew what general field in which we'd be working once we graduate. Back then, I only wanted to study literature, so I chose philology. Pretty much all of my classes were related to this field, with some extras like Philosophy, Sociology, History and Economics. The rest was history of the Russian and world literature (mostly Western), modern European languages (German and Czech in my case), everything about modern Russian language and literature in depth, and ancient languages like Latin, old Russian and Old Slavic. Anya's classes at this point are pretty broad, some related to Arts and others to Science, and she doesn't have to choose her vocation till couple years later. Which is smart and generous for those who have many interests and not sure what to choose at 18. Which is, I believe, the majority.