In my younger and more vulnerable years I have received some advise that has been poisoning my mind ever since.
“When you go to university, don’t think you’ll learn anything useful. It is only when you start working that you’ll learn how things really work.”
With this sound advice I, a small town boy, moved to Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) to study managerial studies, having secured a state scholarship. There I met many young, inexperienced kids, many of whom, just like myself, came to university for lack of other good options, and because we could. We moved by inertia, not fully graduating from high school days a couple of months earlier. This was certainly true of me, but some (at the time it felt like ALL) of the kids fully embraced the opportunities of adult life. Sex, booze and rock’n’roll, as I quickly found out, much to my dismay, were pleasures unfamiliar to me (at the time), so I had nothing better to do than to attend classes.
In the next five years I’d graduate from two very different universities. One that taught me how things work, and another how things should work.
Making Up for Lost Years
Covid started it and war finished it. Offline education as it was prior to 2020, became a thing of the past. Freshman and sophomore years I spent time with my group mates in cramped dusty classrooms. When classes went online, students home and social life out of the window.
Even when we did meet in person, our ranks had thinned. Some students started working full-time, others returned to their hometowns. To be honest, back then I didn’t mind—I was delighted not having to show my face in a classroom every day. Passing courses felt easier, too, if you know what I mean.
Those two years of isolation made me realize just how much I missed that part of student life. My naive 18yo self thought that there would be a lot of studying, but there was much more socializing. And however poor this boy was at it, he still needed it. The pent-up energy had to go somewhere!
Come 2022, full-scale invasion; in fall myself and ~20 other kids enrolled in a master’s program (read: a desperate attempt to push off making hard decisions, but I digress). You’d think they spent all on partying? ergh Wrong! These crazy people were actually studying, and working, and yes, there was some partying too. What was stunning is that these people actually knew why they are there and what they want.1
People here were extremely hardworking and did their best to understand the material. Despite many having a part-(or full)-time job in addition to their studies, they found time and energy to discuss the material.2 The sight of student falling asleep from exhaustion was unimaginable! Here this was usual.
The program didn’t require that we be present in-person, but most came anyway. Some days we’d stay up till way past bedtime and sleep at the premises. Our group understood that studying isn’t a solitary effort, you can never learn alone. So there we were making up the time.
Reality check
On my first semester of undergrad I had a philosophy class that went over my head. I attended lectures, sat through seminars, did homework, yada yada… On the day of the exam I got a ticket with questions I had no answers to. I sat for awhile trying to make sense of the convoluted words on an exam sheet. Letters expanded, my vision blurred, and I fell through the cracks. In that moment I felt like an idiot—it can’t be just me who doesn’t get this?! As it turns out it was me. But for a different reason.
Clutching the piece of paper, my head heavily resting on the balm of my sweaty hand, I glanced to the sides to realize I was in the midst of the play! A play that would repeat itself many times over and one I’d eventually participate in myself—one group tried very hard to look for and not catch another group cheating, another to pretend to not cheat while cheating.
I got an abysmal 9/100 (FX), which sent me, along with three other ‘backward’ students, to a retake in a week. Clearly I didn’t learn the lesson from the play, because that week I spent preparing for the retake. On the day, I wrote what I could and passed.3 As I turned in my answers I got a stern look from professor and an admonition “to think what I do with my life.”
I wasn’t the brightest, but I took classes seriously. It was painful to realize that I couldn’t memorize and understand everything we were taught.4 But that first semester taught me something else: being serious wasn’t enough, you gotta learn to be a thespian, to pretend. Seeing those who cheat get ahead, and those who don’t study at all somehow stay in the pack made me wonder what am I doing there?
At the time it was convenient to put the blame on professors. Boring, uninteresting, teaching obsolete things, not practical… there was plenty of professors who just went through the motions and didn’t care about students. Some, a minority, genuinely wanted us to learn and succeed in life.
One professor even went out of their way to help me pass a difficult course. It looked like professors were encouraged to keep students and not fail them. Some did it out of pity, others because it’s less hassle. And thus, we learned that there are no consequences to failing. So long as you’re nice and at least show your face once in a while, you always had a second, even a third chance.
It wasn’t uncommon during exams for a teacher to go get a coffee, which HAD to be voiced as they leave the room—ready, steady, go! Strangely, I sometimes wished they had failed me, forced me to face the music earlier. Maybe then I would have learned what it really means to study and grew up.
Maybe this is a game, those are the rules. And I learned to play the game. Once I have figured it’d be easier to fail a class, because retaking was much easier. I’d ignore it and then at the end of semester a teacher would give me an opportunity to make-up with a massive test, which you cannot fail, or do a favor of translating an article, or preparing a presentation. Hours of studying saved—that was a win in my book.
One visiting professor, however, challenged the status quo. He wanted us to work and learn. He’d spent extra hours with students to make sure they understood the material. He’d bombard us with homework and would actually check if you did the job. For his efforts he was hated. There was nothing he could do with this culture of impunity. Studying has turned into submitting tasks and had little to do with learning. We were taught, but we didn’t truly learn.
Looking back, I see how wrong I was about what studying is. It’s hard. It’s not supposed to be easy. You’re meant to fail, to wrestle with problems, to struggle until you find a solution—not memorize the answer and forget it the next day. Studying is about thinking critically, questioning your understanding, and challenging yourself. None of this is trivial. For me, the realization came almost too late.
Fast forward to first semester of masters, my best was not enough to pass all the courses. I had failed one calculus course, averaging a meager 70, a mark, a year before, I had to lift my finger to get. There were no retakes, if you fail you had to retake the whole course. In a year! If before I could juggle 2 F, now they’d get me expelled. And the threat was real. Students were expelled, their results annulled.
Student’s attitude was different. Despite us complaining about some professors, everyone understood that it is their responsibility to learn. No shifting the blame on professors or anyone for that matter—if you’ve failed, it was you.
Here, the rules were different, and, which is more, they were enforced. Each breach had consequences, real ones.5 And while I have been fine skirting the rules before, watching others struggle and genuinely try to learn made me look at things differently.6
War
Studying during war feels wrong. One can tell oneself stories of post-war reconstruction and need for specialists. But there in the moment while you’re really struggling to with your homework, guys your age put their life on the line. It’s not that whatever it is you are working on is not hard, but compared to them it is nothing. You can start tomorrow, for some of them there is no tomorrow. And you feel miserable. You think you’re simply wasting your time.
Further devaluing your your aspirations is fact that studying is a gateway for people to dodge draft, buy time or otherwise safeguard themselves from the army. Some consider it “…a better option compared to paying thousands of dollars and escaping”, it’s a cheaper alternative. My male peers have come to some sort of agreement with themselves about their reasons to pursue higher education, at least they bore their cross silently. Escaping into your studies, away from reality was one way to deal with the stress of the moment.
Just a Paper
Thesis. The most dreadful word for a student. It’s the final hurdle in the way of a diploma. Rarely have I found a student that enjoyed working on their thesis or liked doing research for that matter. For most, it’s just something to get over with—another assignment (which also has a price!)7
Not everyone sees the point of putting effort into a thesis, especially during undergrad. Many students from top institutions aim for industry jobs where their skills can earn them high salaries and stable careers. Academia, by comparison, offers little in the way of tangible rewards. Even so, I believe universities should encourage students to take their theses more seriously. A thesis isn’t just another box to tick—it’s a testing ground for everything a student has learned. It should be viewed as an opportunity to show their capabilities. A well-written thesis on a topic of interest is a strong selling point for future specialists, a pitch for higher-paying jobs, even if they don’t consider pursuing further education.
For me, the idea of doing research was always appealing, probably due to my masochistic nature.
Getting a lower grade in a difficult course is one thing, but hearing someone casually claim they wrote their thesis in under a week, that’s a whole new level of demoralizing. Sure, prior knowledge and the complexity of the topic matter, but still! My master thesis took me no less than five months of relentless effort. 2 months to set up a prior experiment to test the initial hypotheses, then another month of extensive literature review and refinement of hypothesis; then 3 more months to finalize the survey, analyse the data and write the damn thing!
A week, you say? My ass!
In the closing minutes of October I’ve, at last, after a months-long marathon, submitted my thesis. And later in December defended it. Writing a thesis is a miserable enough experience: you feel incompetent every step of the way, and on a defense day, you have to convince a committee that you’re not.
Future?
I came from the family that realized the importance of going to university and getting a paper. It’s only when I got into my masters program at KSE that I understood why one really has to got to university. I don’t mean that everyone should get a masters degree or any degree for that matter. Getting one certainly improves the chances of long-term prosperity, but they on their own don’t guarantee it. We are better thinking about universities as bearers of values, than bearers of knowledge. Most of the information can be accessed online anyway.
The thoughts we allows our minds to entertain and (in-)actions they entail are shaped by community and rules it is run by. Join one group and it shapes your whole thinking. And as life has it we don’t usually start with the right group, we are cast in somewhere and have to find our way. University (or technical degree) is that way. It will at the very least expose you to new ways of thinking and living. But if you really want to get the most out of this experience than you better strive to join the best university you can.
For good-for-nothing author getting a masters was a blessing in disguise. It made me rethink my life and, in a way, start anew.
To my teachers and friends: You’ve made a human out of me.
Footnotes
This should come as no surprise. You go to university when you can’t really make this choice—being put up to it by parents, society—and by the time you even consider pursuing a graduate degree you’ve matured enough to know exactly what you are going to get out of it.↩︎
I’m extremely skeptical as to how much those folks were able to learn and process. But the fact is that they were smart and capable kids.↩︎
Not without help of a student, who came more prepared than me. They sneaked me a much needed shpora (slang: cheat sheet).↩︎
Cut this guy some slack. He was only 18.↩︎
Closer to the end of my masters I almost got myself expelled for an incorrect citation. The twenty page explanation and subsequent defense before commission still haunts me to this day.↩︎
Not to sugarcoat too much. People cheated at KSE too. Some more, some less. It is a personal decision. Here, however, this wasn’t institutionalized and treated as a given.↩︎
One student once explained me why they bought their diploma (had somebody write it for them). “I estimated the time it’d take me to write a thesis and how much I could earn in that time. It was more profitable to buy the thesis.” I was speaking with a real economist.↩︎