I wouldn’t really know how all of you feel about your studies at Charles University. Has it been something you had always dreamed of? Has it been an inevitable turn of events that brought you here? Or are you hurrying to finish studying so that you can start working and be productive as soon as possible? I myself probably belong to the last group, always in a hurry to start being an independent grown up. Studying is fine, but what is out there afterward just looks better. It is like having to be satisfied with eating a chocolate bar while actually craving for a juicy peace of chocolate cake.
I am thus fascinated by people’s decisions to go back to college after actually having gone out and lived a full-fledged life, created a family and pursued a career. I notice a few of them around me every day. Every time I cannot help but think about what motivates them to do that. What motivates a person to pursue education after having done it once? Isn’t that just unnecessarily complicating your own life? Who would want to go through the hell of exams all over again?
As I discovered after having talked to Jitka, sometimes it really is about complicating your life and making it harder. Jitka has been one of my classmates for a few months now. She has also been a full-time musician and teacher for the past 30 years. She has two successful sons around my age, and has led quite an interesting life in Australia after having finished the music conservatory in Prague. “I walked past this building [the Faculty of Arts] every day for six years,” she says “and every time I watched the young people busily walking in and out of the main doors. Now I am here and I never imagined I would be, never believed I was going to get in in the first place. Charles University was an opportunity I never had. Me and my brother weren't allowed to attend college because no one in my family was in the communist party. It was a miracle I was even allowed to finish the conservatory.”
Despite the many difficulties, she talks about her education with awe. She considers herself lucky to have been taught by incredible musicians of the time. “Can you imagine us,” she says with a wide smile, “little nobodies in the presence of some of the most amazing virtuosos, such as Lazar Berman, Garrick Ohlsson or Sviatoslav Richter. And they talked to each of us, showing interest in our music, in what each of us had to say... We were so bewildered and excited, so of course we couldn't possibly play anything to them, but the fact that such musicians were genuinely interested in us and spoke to us... It was an amazing feeling and such an effortless thing to do, talking to them. The best are the easiest to talk to.”
Having heard her incredible experiences, I began to understand why she looks so happy and seems to be enjoying her teaching job so much. She spoke of how she used to examine her students in Australia by having concerts for her students and their families at her home. “Music is sharing, not a set of rules or fear of making mistakes. You have to make mistakes to learn. It's how life goes.” She sees teaching as the best job in the world. “It gives you the ability to create and see a person grow. And I learn from my students as they learn from me.”
According to the new Czech laws, in order to be a teacher one has to have a master's degree. This does not apply to Jitka since she is a music teacher but I could see the frustration she felt for her colleagues' situation. “Can you imagine how someone who has taught his whole life and has quite a lot of experience must feel when forced to do something like attend university again because of these circumstances? It is so humiliating.” She returned to studies because she never wants to stop learning and wants to learn from the best as she's used to. She doesn't need it, yet she still does it. In a way, she is willingly humiliating herself because she believes that's how we learn humility.
She fills me up with positive energy so much as we talk, that I find it hard to think about unpleasant and humiliating things when I am with her. It is a part of her charm, the fact she always smiles. But I can see the strong-willed woman behind that smile. And it is that strong-willed woman that sees humiliation as another way of learning in life. Difficulties are motivating for her, and her courage more than motivates me. She never believed she will get into Charles University, but she tried and did.
I was also quite interested in how she sees us, the young adults sitting around her, living in our own young worlds. Her view was a shocking discovery for me; I had never looked at it in that way before. “Our generation, and a few after it, have something wrong with them,” she says. “It is always about having a bigger house, more cars... It's a rat race. The new generations seem to be different from us. It is not easy for you, as it wasn't for us, but you view the world differently, in a good way.”
I cannot possibly describe how thankful I am for the opportunity to meet someone like Jitka and be able to talk to her. It felt so natural and effortless, despite the different times and cultures we grew up and lived in. I am thankful she shared her story with me, enabling me to share it with the rest of you. And I am thankful for her being the person she is and inspiring young people around her. She might not realize it, but she was not the only one given an opportunity here. She gave us an opportunity to see what determination and bravery can do, and that they are limitless, just as kindness and positivism are. And for all that I am grateful, Jitka. Thank you.
Angie Siljanoska
