I was born in Kazan and we lived on Syrtlanova Street. My first childhood memory was early morning, well into autumn: it's very gray, my mother is cradling me in her arms, and I see the tops of the birches growing in the yard. Crows are cawing very loudly. It was such a depressing feeling. I was two years old.

When I thought about this interview, I thought it'd be interesting to talk about feeling at home. It's very much connected with my family. I went to kindergarten, but I was sick quite a bit and spent more time in hospitals than in kindergarten. The greatest joy there was when the woman who walked through the wards selling tubes of condensed milk arrived—everyone waited for her, almost like for Santa Claus. It was boring in the hospital and I had to entertain myself. I remember that I very often made up imaginary stuff to do, imaginary friends [laughing]. I think the importance of feeling at home was greatly influenced by the fact that, at the age of five, I was sent to a boarding school for a short time, because my mother was leaving to study. It was difficult at that age not to have close contact with my family.

The boarding school was located next to Uritsky Park, and I don't know if it's still there now or not. When we went out for walks, there were these pipes, and we thought it was, like, a factory for evil robots or something. My friends and I at the boarding school would fight imaginary robots with karate [laughing].

Then we moved to Vosstaniya Street in the Moscovsky District, and that was a great area. Now I live downtown, and, lately, I've noticed that when people talk about it, they say that you have to "cross the river" to get there and that it's far away. I don't see it that way. They talk like it's some other universe.

I lived very close to the school, literally a minute walk, so they began to let me go to school alone and hang out in the school yard at a young age.

We hung out in the back courtyard, where we couldn't be seen, at an early age, talking about stuff. Conversations went from "Do you like Misha? By how much percent?" to adult conversations in high school about relationships and how we were going to live.

I recently recalled how we would go to IKEA often with classmates. We skipped classes to go there; it was so cool! You'd just go somewhere far away, and it's like you have a house with a bed there [laughing].

I had a math teacher at school whom I hated because she would scream and psychologically terrorize me; it was very sad. I remember that my friend and I then loved to watch Charmed, and I had a notebook—this was in the fifth grade—that we wrote all sorts of spells in. Once we didn't want to go to math class so badly that we recited a spell ... and the lesson was canceled! We felt like real sorceresses. Such a story inspires hope that miracles exist.

Teachers are a very important topic for me, because I'm now in education. I think it's impossible to learn when you're afraid.

I went to study in Germany on an exchange program in the 8th grade. It was a very significant event. I studied at a German school, lived with a family, and I had great friends that I hung out with. I was very happy. I practically didn't know the language, but when you're in that environment, you just start speaking in order to survive. This improved my language a lot and influenced my future as well. I then taught German at Speaking Planet and worked as a translator.

In the tenth grade I went back to Germany, to the same school, but it wasn't that great. I met the same friends, but, apparently, we had grown up and changed.

And at about the same time, I began to think about what I wanted to do, because pressure from society was, like, where will you go? And all my life I hated that question: what will you do? I came up with a lot of things, tried out different areas.

This social obligation, that right after school you have to go to university, know what you want to do in this life, and make this choice forever: it's bad that you're forced to decide right away. Even if you look at how I work now, each of my projects is delayed for a maximum of two years. And our rhythm of life is such that, it seems to me, we shouldn't have to make a decision that will determine our entire life. It's great when you can try different things and learn new things about yourself.

I got into Kazan Federal University to study Romano-Germanic philology. I started with not what I wanted to do, but from what I could do: I could speak and understand German, so there was no question about it. I passed the exams; everything went smoothly and well.

At the university, I won a grant and went to Germany again for a year. All these trips, of course, broadened my worldview.

My mom jokes that my constant craving for travel is due to the fact that I started doing it very early, in her stomach. She worked as a flight attendant.

It was always easy for me to go somewhere and adapt. It's fun, even, because you can try something new, behave differently.

In Kazan, I consider myself more of an introvert and I can't really walk up to someone and be, like, "Hey there! Hi!" But if I'm traveling, then I'll do it, one hundred percent; I'll find friends. I think that the environment that affects you every day keeps you from being yourself sometimes. And when you go abroad, where no one knows you, you can bloom a little, or something. And, in Kazan, you to shrink a little.

I graduated from the university at the same time that I broke up with my boyfriend, and I spontaneously decided to move to St. Petersburg in 2014, although I had no job, no friends, and no apartment there. This is an experience I think that everyone between the ages of 18 and 25 should try. A challenge: can you do it on your own or not?

I started looking for a job, and it took me a month and a half. I had some interviews at some sketchy places, and then I was hired by a very cool IT company, where my German language came in handy. We had a great office with all the perks. The guys created software and I talked with the German resellers. It was awesome: after the chilly university buildings on Mezhlauka Street in Kazan, where you have to wear your jacket to class and take notes during a lecture, to move to St. Petersburg in such a great building. I had a fairly high salary, more than I earn now.

But I had my ups and downs: I broke down at McDonald's once, because something didn't work out for me there, but that was at the very beginning. Then I moved in with my friend Ben. This was probably the best period in my life. Three of us lived on Italianskaya [Italian] Street, right downtown, on the Fontanka River. We called ourselves the Italian children and threw cool parties. For example, in St. Petersburg, they often have restaurant day, when many restaurants make these small trial meals, and we decided to make our own food court. That is, we gate crashed the city. I remember, our kitchen was in ruins. We sent sandwiches from the second floor by a string to the first floor; it was great.

But then the question of what do I want to do started to catch up with me. I thought that working in an IT company, constantly calling Germany, that's not quite what my soul and my brain were created for.

And then it didn't seem scary at all to move to another place, because that feeling remained. I also felt a kind of responsibility to my parents, that is, a transition from having a children's relationships to adulthood—this is also an important period.

A friend I worked with at the IT company quit her job with me and we decided to spend the winter in Asia.

Then I had to decide what to do with the apartment, keep it or not. Ben had just decided to move to Israel, and I didn't have a return ticket from Asia. I didn't know how long I would live there, so I decided not to keep the apartment and sent all my things to Kazan, because I didn't know what I would do next. That was my path: into the unknown.

My friend and I traveled around Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand, without any plan: in the evening you look for an interesting place to visit, and the next day you go there.

That is, I was never like, "God, how can you live like this?" Even if it's just, like, a hovel. I look with curiosity, like, "Oh, can you do that? Cool!"

For example, you're walking down a narrow street in Cambodia and there's a hairdresser outside, a dude sitting there, a mirror is nailed to a tree, a table, and he's clipping his nails on the street and throwing the clippings away there. And you're like, "Oh, interesting."

I'm always interested in how people behave in different countries. And what's even more interesting how they behave in Russia, because we live here. When you travel, you can watch how people act there, and how they act in their home country. And, after traveling, many questions arise: why does that happen? Why isn't it customary for us to smile, have small talk, and so on? There's no single answer; you just accept it, like someone from abroad. You learn to live with it. When the conductor on the train yells at you or someone in the clinic is yelling, you just think: "Aha, so that's how it is." You can be rude back to them, or you can just laugh and find some other retort, make them laugh, or something.

I remembered a funny thing: a friend told me how she went to Brazil and received a lot of attention and compliments there, and then she came to Russia and wondered why nobody here says anything, even when she has put on makeup and gotten dressed up. And my colleague from Latvia, who studied in England, came to Innopolis [an IT village, university and technology park in Tatarstan] and said hi everyone, but no one answered him, and that made him sad. It's just a nonbinding conversation, just small talk, like, "how are you?" And he gets upset that there's no customer service. For me, this is a big question: why do people behave in one way or another.

So, going back to Asia: I remember seeing my friend off on the train to the airport and bursting into tears because I didn't know what to do next. I wanted to return, but I had to figure out where to return, to St. Petersburg, Kazan, or maybe even to Moscow.

And, of course, Kazan was the one place that could give it to me, because I have parents here with whom I have a great relationship, because I have friends here, and I know everything here. I thought that I would return for a while, for a couple of months, and then probably go back to St. Petersburg. But I'm still in Kazan, and I don't even know why myself.

And this question of what I will do, what is my purpose, it returned during that period in Kazan.

I taught German, but that was like a side job. I never looked at it as a career. I went into it to see if I can formalize and present my knowledge in an interesting way so that another person would accept my knowledge and then use it. I was constantly looking for materials, looking for educational games I could use. I had great conversations on some topics, but when I had used up everything I had, I realized that I could do it and had no other goals, so I stopped teaching two years ago.

Then I worked with children in the House of Entertaining Science and Technology, came up with various projects and a popular-science show.

Once I tried to work at the Kazan City Hall. I went there because I wanted to do something in Kazan, try to steer it in some direction, but I only worked there for two or three months, because the salary was very small and the workload was huge: they could ask you to come at 6:00 a.m. and you would be finished at 10:00 p.m., and you'd also be busy on Saturdays, with no extra pay. I worked in the event-planning department and thought that I would plan events, but in fact I was just shuffling paper. My expectations did not coincide with reality at all.

When I worked at the German-Russian Institute of Advanced Technologies, I was really immersed in the field of education for the first time. I also worked with Germans and I had a great German boss.

He said that life is much more interesting in Russia and there're a lot of things you can do here that you can't in Germany. And he really liked it. He liked the freedom. Because in Germany, their system is based on rules, and rules are very important for Germans. In Russia everything's a bit less uptight [laughing], and that makes it freer.

Then I worked at TAT CULT FEST, the new Tatar culture festival. I built up interactions with partners and worked on an educational program.

Now I'm working in education, and I am very happy about it. I organize student projects at Innopolis University. I don't want to put pressure on people through education, but give them the opportunity to try out new things and create a suitable environment for it.

In Innopolis I meet very cool people who come there from other cities and countries. They come here to work and grow in Innopolis; they really like this city. Most of my colleagues aren't from Kazan. At the same time, many of my childhood friends left: to Hong Kong, Berlin, Moscow, St. Pete.

My boyfriend loves Kazan very much and is sad when his friends leave, because he wants people to do something here, boost the city.

For example, one person will say that Kazan has blossomed, and another will say that its pace is becoming too much like Moscow: that is, there are different points of view, and there's nothing wrong with that, because it's just progress.

It makes no difference where to do your business now, so I know that if I do something in education, I will be helping the world as a whole, and, therefore, my hometown as well.