Salome Khurtsidze – a 24-year-old Bachelor student of English Philology.

“I started learning English language in the kindergarten and year by year I became closely related to English language that I decided to make it as my profession. I remember the year before I went to the university that I often spoke about my professional choice and people could not hide their astonishment. I studied at public school N41 where students learn physics and mathematics very intensively, that’s why I was expected to be a mathematician.

I divide my university studies into two parts: before and after the exchange program. There is a good phrase in English language – turning point. This is called the period when the situation relatively changes for better. I would appreciate the experience of my exchange program.

I studied at Gratz University in Austria. I acquired so many values that academic education is one of them, not the only one. I can say that I discovered my own country in the process of getting to know other people’s countries and cultures. I greatly appreciate my own country, I see positive and negative characteristics. It is nonsense when some Georgian people feel afraid that foreign people are going to take away our identity. I have been to 10 countries already and if I go to 100 more countries, I will make identification with Georgia. I respect cultures of other countries and I really want to share their experience and examples.

I often think about the reason why Georgian people are a bit afraid of losing their identity. I wonder what the reason of this fear is. I suppose it is caused by lack of information and experience. People who are afraid of different, have seen and experienced very little. We must overcome this difficulty as a nation. One of the effective things is searching for diversity. There is a key of acceptance in it. At present I study in Master’s program of education administrating at Ilia State University.

I took a timeout for a year between Bachelor’s and Master’s studies. During this time, I worked in a very good organization to help young people develop themselves in terms of informal education. I got so interested in the process of education that I decided to study informal education more deeply. I study the politics of education, its system and structure, organizational behavior, researches and studies, economics and law of education. I want to take part in creating and spreading high quality of education. At present, I am involved in scout girls’ movement in informal educational field. I think that sharing knowledge is the best opportunity of development. Sharers of education must share their knowledge and experience tirelessly. I can make an example of a person, who has a candle and gives it to other people in order to lighten the whole darkness.”