International Students Testimonials

Saara Khalid, USA

National Research University – Higher School of Economics

The more I study Russian language, the more I like it

I started taking Russian kind of on a whim. The more I studied it, the more I liked it. I’ve always wanted to study abroad, and I really wanted to come to Russia, so when I heard about this opportunity from professors in our Russian Department, I decided to come.

It was really cool – I took a language course and then US-Russian relations, then history class in Saint Petersburg. This is my first visit to Russia – I was really nervous but everything was really good. In addition, being a psychology major I was a little concerned about my lack of background knowledge. But I must say that Prof Suslov who taught Russia-US relations was very accommodating about our knowledge – so for my final paper I was able to fall back on my psychology studies and integrate my field of study into what I was taught during the course. By the way, it was my first political science class ever! This was very interesting for me – in class I was trying to establish how what is being discussed relates to what I already know. It was actually nice to study something not related to psychology – I take quite a lot of psychology classes at my university.

I feel that my Russian has improved a lot – we got to practice speaking in the street or in the restaurants, ordering food, asking for directions. Also, I had a Russian roommate so I could talk to her every evening in Russian about how the day went. If I didn’t understand something, she tried rewording it or speaking more slowly.

I would like to continue studying Russian – I love the language – and I’m also thinking of applying to HSE’s English-taught Master’s Programme in Psychology.