Tamara Sh. (ILE) about her interests and studies

I listened to the humanities with my mouth open, especially if they were taught with at least a little emotion. But most of all, I loved the natural sciences: physics, biology, anatomy. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to become a doctor, and I was particularly strong in these subjects — I even took first place in Olympiads in them.

By my final year of school, I began dreaming of doing science, exploring the unknown, and traveling at the same time. To me, all three of these desires came together in the field of oceanology. I imagined myself descending into the depths of the ocean in a bathyscaphe, surrounded by the underwater world. Even now, that dream still takes my breath away. But it remained just a dream. To pursue it, I would have had to go to Moscow or Leningrad to apply, and at the last moment I lost my nerve and didn’t go. I stayed in my hometown and enrolled in a local institute — one whose name at least resonated with my dream: the Water Transport Institute.