By Readers’ Request: More on Why I Emigrated, Part II

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Clarissa

August 7, 2011

The reason why my groupmates were acting this way was that after decades of genocides and repressions, people had become afraid of pretty much everything. This is the kind of fear that gets transmitted on a genetic level. You might not have experienced the genocide yourself, but the genetic memory of your ancestors who conceived you in fear and gave birth to you in mortal terror is always there with you.

So the students started attending one of the courses and ignored the other one. Now, the professor of the ignored course showed up to his scheduled class and discovered that the students weren’t there. He also had the Soviet legacy of inborn terror, so instead of going to the Dean’s office and inquiring as to the whereabouts of his students, he kept coming to class in a futile hope that one day students would appear.

They never did, of course.

At the end of the semester, when the exam period came about, a huge scandal broke out. Students hadn’t taken one of the courses and couldn’t pass the exam. The professor had been getting paid for not delivering his lectures. The future schedules got messed up beyond recognition.

People got into all this trouble for the simple reason that they couldn’t deal with the simple task of going to the administration and saying, “I’m sorry, I think there might be a mistake.”

This was when I realized that I wasn’t only completely different from the older generation. I also had nothing in common with my own. Believe me, I’m not blaming my people for being the way they are. I just understood that I was so different from them that no happiness was possible for me in their midst.

So I came home and said, “You were right, we should leave. I’m now ready to submit an application to the Canadian consulate.”

This was absolutely the best decision of my life. It brought me poverty, divorce, struggle, hardship but it got me to a place where, on the most basic level, people think and act like me.

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3 responses to “By Readers’ Request: More on Why I Emigrated, Part II”

Ukrainian

August 8, 2011

Wow… This story sounds like a joke from one of those “Department’s days” (literally, at one of the light-hearted “panels with students”, one professor was asked, “would you teach a lecture before an empty classroom, just to polish your already superior teaching skills?”)

But I digress. After reading your posts, Clarissa, I am starting to think you have serious issues with understanding and identifying other peoples’ motives, why they act one way or another (I apologize if this is due to your autism – to my shame, I really know nothing about this condition in adults). In this particular case, I am 99.9% percent sure that the students, the slackers they usually are, just decided they’ve got a perfect and legitimate excuse for skipping a class. I can imagine that at least some of my former classmates would be vowing to act the same way in such a situation. The fact that your entire group decided to skip that class altogether just attests to the number of dumbasses among them, but that usually varies. I assure you, these same students would not hesitate to inundate the Dean’s office with requests if they needed to get permission to re-take a failed final exam, all kinds of extensions, etc.

What gets me, though, is that your quickness to draw overarching conclusions, which paint the Ukrainian people as a scared, witless mob who are unable and afraid to stand for themselves. I remind you that Ukraine spearheaded, together with the Baltic republics, the disbandment of Soviet Union, that Ukrainians were not afraid to voice their political convictions during the “orange revolution” in 2004 (nothing like that happened so far in Russia or Belorussia, the countries whose population mentality very close, if not identical, to that of the people of Ukraine).

I do not know anyone, except you, who emigrated because “the people of my country are not good enough for me”. In most cases, people emigrate because of the political system, economic situation, personal reasons (family reunions, etc).

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 8, 2011
  
  Well, excuse me for emigrating for reasons you don’t find legitimate. Also, excuse me for thinking that I am a better judge of the motivations of people I’ve known for years than you who never met themm.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 8, 2011
    
    I also want to warn everybody that anybody who tries to dismiss me or bully me on the basis that I’m autistic will be bullied right back. So I suggest you think VERY carefully before engaging in “Oh, ypou just say this because you have autism” spiel. Want to be an ignorant, hateful, idiotic bigot? Feel free to do that away from my blog.
    
    I’m disgusted at how often people have started to bring this particular bigotry to my blog.
    
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