An essay by Valeria Podolskaya, written under the impression of her teaching practice at a secondary school.
In a world where time is the ultimate currency and success is measured by the number of tasks checked off, the value of "understanding" begins to look almost antique. Beautiful, perhaps—but seemingly impractical in daily life. We grow accustomed to clip-based thinking, to digests instead of books, to bullet points instead of dialogue. Ask a modern philology student what matters more: quickly grading a stack of essays or deeply engaging with the logic behind each mistake—and many will choose speed.
For a long time, I believed that pragmatic values would inevitably triumph over academic deliberation. That was, until I realized: acting like a "blind watchmaker," assembling a mechanism by touch alone, I risked losing my ability to see.
The Conflict: Academia vs. "The Real World"
I am a fourth-year student at the Faculty of Philology. For four years, we were taught that a text's value lies in its inexhaustibility. We could spend three full seminars unpacking a single stanza, debating the nuance of an epithet or the intonation of a dash. It was slow, deliberate—and, as I then thought, disconnected from reality.
The world outside buzzed with startups, tech salaries, and the mantra: "Speed of reaction decides everything." My internal value conflict reached its peak when I convinced myself that "real life" belonged to those who could "catch things on the fly"—not to those who argued over commas.
The Turning Point: A Lesson in Listening
The moment of truth arrived during my teaching practicum at a secondary school. I believed this was my chance to apply my philological sharpness to real-world practice. But very quickly, I encountered what I came to call "industrial pedagogy."
My mentor teachers repeated phrases like:
- "The main thing is to cover the curriculum."
- "Don't go too deep—you won't have time."
- "Grade papers quickly, or you'll fall behind."
Efficiency became my new creed. I learned to skim student work, tick boxes, and write generic comments like "Well done!" or "Be more careful." My philological training actually helped me do this faster: I could instantly spot key errors without truly reading the text. I felt like a winner.
But the deeper I immersed myself in this logic, the more acutely I felt a growing deafness.
The Lesson That Changed Everything
The pivotal moment came while preparing for an open lesson in seventh grade. My mentor—an experienced literature teacher with thirty years of practice—assigned me a task: develop a lesson plan and handouts for analyzing a poem, all within two days.
"The main thing is a clear structure," she said. "Stick to the timeline, don't get sidetracked by lyricism. We need results."
I obediently drafted a plan, selected questions, printed cards. Everything was concise, logical, timed to the minute. I felt like a true professional.
But during the lesson, things went off-script. One student—a usually quiet, unassuming boy—answered the question "What feelings does this poem evoke in you?" in a way that defied all templates. He connected the image of a lonely sail from Lermontov's "The Sail" to a recent family story I knew nothing about. The class fell silent.
And I, staring at my lesson plan—where the only prepared response for such a moment was a brief "acceptable"—froze. Instead of nurturing a living conversation, I politely nodded and moved the lesson to the next agenda item.
After class, my mentor pulled me aside.
"Why did you get scared?" she asked. "That boy reached genuine understanding—and you shut the door. Did you come here to teach children or to stamp them out according to a template?"
I defended myself: "But you said yourself—stick to the timeline, don't get distracted by lyricism…"
She sighed. "The timeline is a tool, not a goal. If, for its sake, you stop hearing the children, then you're not a teacher—you're a conveyor belt. Fast doesn't mean good. Sometimes you need to stop in time—and understand."
Reclaiming the Art of Understanding
I was lost. My value of "speed" collided with hers of "understanding"—and I lost.
That evening, I reread my lesson plan with horror: I had unlearned how to hear living speech. My eyes skimmed methodological templates; my brain demanded strict adherence to bullet points. I had become a hostage of the very "efficiency" I had so zealously mastered. I had replaced understanding with mere recognition.
This experience led me back to Susan Sontag's essay "Against Interpretation." For Sontag, the value of art—and of any utterance—lay not in hunting for hidden meanings by forcibly applying schemas, but in perceiving its sensuous, living form. She rebelled against excessive analysis that kills immediacy.
Yet here, I find myself debating her—using her own method. Yes, interpretation in the philological sense (dissecting a text into molecules according to a pre-set grid) can be dull and deadening. But Sontag, perhaps unintentionally, was defending precisely deep understanding in her polemic. She called for a return to sensibility—but to restore it, one must pause, invest time, abandon templates.
The modern world has gone further: it kills not interpretation, but the very possibility of looking closely and listening deeply. We live in an age Sontag never witnessed—an age of short videos and endless feeds. If her contemporaries "digested" culture by chewing it according to ready-made recipes, we swallow it without tasting.
A Counter-Cultural Choice
And here I, a philology student, must admit: the value of understanding underpins every other value. Without it, "speed" becomes mere fuss, "results" an illusion.
My school mentor—who made me reflect on that lesson—proved to be the bearer of this archaic yet salvific value. She didn't chase perfect timing; she wanted me to see living children behind the methodological cards. She understood that any process—be it a lesson or working with a text—is not a checklist, but a living fabric of relationships. Break one thread in the name of speed, and the whole tapestry unravels.
This experience shifted my coordinate system. I didn't abandon philology or lose faith in the modern world—but I stopped being ashamed of my academic slowness. I introduced a personal rule of "slow reading": once a week, instead of a digest article, I take on a complex book. I allow myself to read just ten pages, argue with the author in the margins, double back.
I realized that the value of "understanding" today is an act of civic courage. It is a counter-cultural choice in a world that shouts: "You have no time!" But if we have no time for understanding, what do we have time for? For mistakes we will heroically correct with the same meaningless speed?
My philological education—which I once tried to "adapt" to pragmatic reality—turned out not to be a burden, but my main instrument. A text (and a lesson, like life itself, is also a text) demands not scanning, but an event.
I am grateful for that moment in school and for that tough yet honest lesson from an experienced mentor. The value of a person, a text, or a situation is determined not by how quickly we rush past, but by how deep a trace it leaves within us. And for that trace to appear, only one thing is needed: the desire to understand. Without it, all other values are merely beautiful shells around emptiness.
Valeria Podolskaya, 4th year, "Russian Philology"
Photo provided by the author
