A common question which tourists like to ask me is how I spend the winter time, what I do in winter when there are no tourists. I think many people with the beginning of autumn have a strange feeling that they need to study something important which they have missed in their life. It can be such a strong feeling that people start to study something what they will never use in their practical life. This is why all private teachers start their season around autumn and autumn-winter is the most intense time for them to make money. People sometimes study English, or Italian, or Japanese, or painting, or even knitting, or dancing only because this strange autumn feeling of “study need” does not let them be satisfied. This is a good thing anyway, at least because this “autumn feeling” creates more opportunities for private teachers and this is how they get the money to buy the food. And sometimes not just the food but a trip to Maldives. But is there any other sense in this “autumn infection of dissatisfaction”?.. While one may contemplate over this hard question, thousands of courses get the new clients and more and more courses are being opened.
There is probably only one sort of people which is never caught by this autumn infection of creating new life senses. And this sort of peole is our officials of all levels. Maybe they get some injection which with 100 % effectiveness protects them from seeking for new senses and any sort of dissatisfaction. That is why so many institutions of higher education in Russia have been recently estimated by the government experts as “not effective” (useless in other words). Every year financing of this sphere is being cut. It means that there are less professors, less lecturers, less researchers. But a really strange fact is that in the conditions of “highly competitive environment” the best ones are expected to stay. But usually the reality is that it is visa versa – the worst stay. Why this happens – I have no answer at all. It is a trick. It is like in medicine. I know we have too many doctors (it is hard to find this job after the graduation). But at the same time we have very few good doctors. Trick, isn’t it?
So the fact is that while the government wants to make people “effective”, people still get an infection of “non-effectiveness” – seeking for senses. And this is usually transformed into commercial interest of other people who open language courses, knitting courses etc. They will convince you in their advertising that the previous model of education was a total shit, they provide of course a new model of education – happy, interactive, successful, total joy. Just pay them money. So these courses convince you that they are 100 % “effective”. According to the government course.
Yet every autumn does not care about the government course and puts a question of new senses. It is a big autumn challenge. Every year autumn reminds you that you should not only be but be self-fulfilled.
Garden around Catherine Palace at autumn
Maples in Catherine Palace garden