Habibullo-Eugene Kiselev
A Synopsis of my Life
April 24th, 2018, Tuesday, 08:36:30 p.m.
Yekaterinburg, Russia. GMT 05:00
In the morning, I felt as if someone or something was burning me, as if my spirit was afire. It was not strong, though. However, it was quite exhausting. I did not feel this burning pain physically; it was not like something the Mormons call the influence of the Holy Ghost. My thoughts were burning my spirit rather than my body. All the more so, my college students did not come to my class this morning. I was worrying about them and I even called their Dean’s Office to find out if all was okay with them. I found the monitor of their group on the Internet and wrote her a message:
Dear students! 😊
You have missed my class this morning. I contacted your Dean’s Office; they said they would see into this case. I asked them to abstain from reprimanding you. Please let me know if all is good with all of you.
Yours truly,
Eugene Kiselev
Shortly after, the monitor, named Arina Godova (Russian: Арина Годова), came to me with her friend, trying to explain the reason of their absence. I said, “That is all okay. I asked the lady at your Dean’s Office to not reprimand you. I am glad that all of you are safe and sound”.
Following that, we had a Department meeting at 12:00 p.m. We discussed many questions of self-interest. At the end of the meeting, a Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor Svetlana Bezborodova (Russian: Светлана Безбородова) gave us a report about the foreign language competence of students. I listened to her, although I was initially against this topic. The speech of Svetlana Anatolievna Bezborodova seemed to be a peroration at first. However, I understood one thing. In particular, she touched upon the question of increasing the students’ motivation for language learning. A competence in a foreign language can never be formed, if the students learn a language. In general, one should never learn a language. One should live for the sake of it. As I have already written here, modern education is subjected to formalism. This is not good. This is a hard question though. Living for the sake of the language can only be possible if a student wants to master it to the highest level if he/she wants to emigrate, for example. Other cases, I think, will be the examples of this notorious formalism.
Okay. At about 07:56 p.m. I gave a call to my Teacher, Eugene Lobanov. I asked him about creating my own writing style. He said I should not be formal about it, rather, I should write, the style will be formed by itself. “You are too zealous about following patterns. You always try to follow the form” – he said. He also gave me advice to not use the two of the forewords in my coming book of poetry. “The reader’s personality will be split if he reads two forewords. The ideas of the first Foreword writer may contradict those of the writer of the second one” – he concluded. I decided to follow his advice. We finished at about 08:14 p.m.
At 08:16 p.m. I called Alexei Kuzin to discuss some issues. He called me back at about 08:23 p.m.; we talked for a bit more than one minute.
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