Sophomore Finds Time for Her Hobbies in Quarantine

She started professionally engaging with the sport when she was four. Her parents took her to skate because her cousin was a skater as well. It was hard to quit once she started because of the pressure from her coaches, parents, and everyone else. “I’m glad that I quit,” she admitted. “I spent too much time skating, 10 years of my life training for at least three hours every single day,” she said wishing she had spent that time learning languages and instruments.

Tamara is currently stuck on campus, but she is enjoying being alone and she announced that with an enthusiastic expression. “I have more time to develop myself, a big benefit is more guitar time and more movies, but considering the circumstances that brought me here I cannot fully enjoy what I’m doing,” she said reminding me of recent events. While on campus, she sometimes goes down to the bands room to play the electric guitar in her pajamas.

Tamara has been playing guitar since she was 12. “It was my father’s dream to play guitar and then one day he bought me one,” she said. “It was the best thing to ever happen to me.” She started with a classical guitar slowly making her way up to the electric one, listening to artists like Hendrix and Clapton and trying to learn all songs from Nirvana.

“I could spend 6 hours a day not talking to anyone, just on my own with a guitar,” she told me. She doesn’t dedicate as much time to it now because she doesn’t believe that she can turn it into a career. However, she doesn’t regret the time spent on practicing guitar. She said that if she could do anything for the rest of her life, it would be playing it.

The 19-year-old sophomore from Kazakhstan is double-majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication and Political Science, while hoping to minor in Film Studies.

Journalism had not been on the list of choices because she thought that it was for extroverts who like talking to people. At AUBG she met many introverts like her doing journalism and after talking to some professors, decided to give it a try.

The secondary major was inspired from the introductory course in Political Science which changed her view on the subject. She doesn’t see herself working in politics, but that doesn’t stop her from getting educated on different subjects.

When she left for Bulgaria, she was passionate about making movies and knew that she wanted to do Film Studies. Movies are an important part of her life and one of her favorites is “Back to the Future.” She likes to re-watch it because it brings memories from her childhood and her family.

She is close to her family, her parents and her younger brother. “In a way,” she said, “I made him like the same things I do so he could be an interesting friend for me.” She misses her family but can’t go back now because she is afraid of catching the virus and transmitting it to them.

Tamara considers herself shy and altruistic and doesn’t talk much in large groups of people. “I am comfortable not speaking. It works better like that for everybody,” Tamara told me. She often holds back before speaking her mind because she values other peoples’ opinions about her.

Vese Neziri is a Journalism and Mass Communication student at AUBG. She likes listening to people talk about their passion during interviews.