People of HSE, Part II: Personal Reflections on 2020

A research project, a new book, a country house, cats, chipmunks, and Cool Academic Ideas. Irina Makarova, Roman Kurochkin, Valeria Kasamara and Evgeny Artemov talk about what happened with them in 2020.

Valeria Kasamara
Vice Rector

My catchphrase for 2020 could very well be ‘never say never’. Who would have thought that this year would change our perception of space and time, values, and human opportunities so dramatically? Previously, only Hermione Granger had been capable of attending several classes at once with the use of Time Turner, but now, you, just like a Harry Potter character, can attend several meetings at a time. You just need to make sure you have enough devices for all these ‘covideo meetings’.

At one of these very meetings we finally realized a long-time dream of every HSE employee and student: we got Valery Meladze to be the headliner of our 2020 graduation party. And all of HSE danced to Samba Belogo Motylka.

The hashtag of the year was #покавшэдома (while hse is at home), which was coined by Maria Yudkevich. How many stories about kids, cats, and parents crashing our work meetings will we have to  remember when this period is over? I’m happy that despite all the complications of adaptation and Zoomification, we’ve used this pandemic period to launch several interesting projects with our poli-sci first-years, who turned their cameras on during seminars, and you didn’t feel like a crazy person talking to black squares.

Together with colleagues, we launched an interesting project on political attitudes of Russian pupils. And today, we are interviewing them from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. A year ago, I could hardly believe that I would study contemporary YouTube bloggers, such as Yulik, Kuzma, and Litvin, in order to understand the Zoomer generation, but today, I even know how to play Among Us! OK boomer, never say never!

Overall, this year was very important for youth policy. A new youth policy bill has been prepared, and a professional standard for specialists who work with young people has been adopted. We at the Institute for Applied Political Studies have been lucky to participate in on-site expert meetings (oh, this magical word ‘offline’!) and work on these documents, as well as to speak at several federal and local forums.

This year, some very important academic conferences were canceled, together with the whole industry of academic tourism; on the other hand, we’ve looked at our own country from a different perspective. Lots of my colleagues started traveling to watch aurora borealis in Murmansk, to hike the mountains of Dagestan, to feel the Christmas spirit in Suzdal. My personal discovery of the year is Krasnoyarsk Stolby, where I was fortunate to celebrate my birthday and handfeed nuts to the chipmunks there.

‘I will never be a country home owner,’ I would always say to my family and friends just a year ago. ‘I am a city girl!’ Now, I am a happy owner of a cottage outside the city and seriously thinking about the plants I’m going to grow next spring in order to show my kids where carrots and zucchinis come from. Apart from buying a cottage, I got two cats, Yusik and Barsik, in addition to my cat Masya, and also have become an animal volunteer, who is now trying to get two homeless village puppies adopted. I’m grateful to my colleagues who helped me with this. Andrey Kozhanov has already adopted one of them, and if you are looking for a New Year’s present to yourself, I will be happy to introduce you to the pups! There can’t be a better present! I wish everyone optimism. May you avoid Zoom fatigue, and may you never say never!

Science Battles at HSE University

Evgeny Artemov
Vice Rector

2020 has been a unique one for all of humanity. It has taught us to think and work in a new way. It has motivated us to be kinder to each other, to quickly reformat all our processes for effective, continuous, and safe work.

Looking back, I am impressed by the hard and important work done by the team of the Office of Corporate Procurement and Tenders, and the teachers and staff of the Department of Military Training who became staff of the Military Training Centre.

In 2020, my colleagues and I successfully passed the State Labour Inspection audit. We are going to increase our competencies and effort in this area, so that our staff’s labour is safe and comfortable.

Thanks to coordinated efforts of the Security Office and related services, we’ve managed to avoid emergencies. This has been extremely important for us.

And I’m very grateful to everyone (students and staff) for their understanding and following the epidemiological requirements.

I wish everyone good health and success in the new, no less interesting, year of 2021!

Roman Kurochkin, student
MIEM, Information Science and Computation Technology

This year has been memorable due to all of the cool people I met. I can say that I discovered the huge world of HSE students and staff and, once again, saw that our community is the greatest. Everyone is ready to help and support each other. I think it would be very hard for me to survive the quarantine without interacting with other people, and I’m thankful to everyone I’ve been lucky to meet!

Of course, this wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the HSE Minecraft project. The project started at the beginning of the first wave of the lockdown on March 18. Other students and I  started creating something new, which later appeared on all online news feeds.

The main conclusions I made for myself this year are: don’t be afraid to try your hand at something new; it’s important to support others; and don’t stop at wherever you are now – try to discover new areas, since in future, they may be useful.

Pokrovka in Minecraft

Irina Makarova
Director of the Centre for Psychological Counselling

This year has been a memorable one and it certainly won’t be confused with any other. It hasn’t been easy, but it has given us an opportunity to make a lot of discoveries, and these discoveries are my main personal achievements of the year.

From a professional standpoint, this year has been unique for psychologists as an opportunity both for practice and for research. The demand and popularity of our profession have grown incredibly.

I have learned a lot and did many things for the first time in my life. Online consultations, online therapy, conferences, webinars, festivals and marathons. The intensity of events this year has been breathtaking. It’s good that we have the holiday break ahead: we need time to digest all of this. The almighty online communications have expanded boundaries and shortened distances. Our contacts with colleagues from all over the country from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, as well as beyond the borders, have grown. And this is amazing!

But my main and most important insight of the year has been the opportunity to see what amazing people are around me, what kind and understanding people work at the Centre for Psychological Counselling, how we need each other and miss each other, how we are happy to meet in our team, when we all of a sudden see that work naturally turns into celebration and fun. Paradoxically, we couldn’t have seen this without the lockdown and the pandemic.

December 25, 2020