I'm thinking about where to get food

Vladimir Putin is being asked for free products for scientists

All the talk about the problems of scientific youth may seem like chatter against the background of a document recently received by the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. This letter from a young biologist from the science city of Pushchino near Moscow turned out to be at the disposal of the editorial office of the newspaper "Search". With the permission of the author, we publish its abridged version.

Dear fellow citizens reading this letter (and with special luck – the respected highest official of the country)!

Using the example of a personal situation in which my personality is of the slightest importance, I will tell you about the causes of brain drain, which, of course, are already known to you, but in this particular case I am reviewing, in my opinion, are egregious.

The letter also contains a specific request, and due to my awareness of your download, I will highlight it separately in the last paragraph.

So, my name is Yulia Vershinina, I live and receive a biological education (master's degree) in the Pushchino science city of the Moscow region.

I'm not studying here alone. Several hundred students also receive education here, in a beautiful and quiet city-park.

The Master's degree program of the Pushchinsky State Natural Science Institute assumes the following training scheme: we all listen to excellent lectures given to us by professional scientists, specialists in their fields of the deepest level.

Most of the knowledge we have to get on our own, as in any master's degree. At the same time, the university and the research institute have a very beneficial symbiosis, otherwise why would the university exist on the basis of the research institute? We all work in laboratories that we have chosen for ourselves according to our interests. We are supposed to work in the laboratory from morning to evening, including Saturday. This is our mandatory curriculum, it must not be violated.

This is a very interesting activity – to gain practical skills and feel yourself, if not in the center of the development of the main science of the XXI century, then at least not on its outskirts.

Personally, I am engaged in molecular biology, specifically stem cells and the creation of models of transgenic animals. After all, what could be more relevant? Of course, bioinformatics and genomics are more relevant, but they are also being dealt with in our city.

So, all of us, both undergraduates and numerous urban graduate students, work in the laboratories of the Research Institute. Someone is officially employed, someone is not, it already depends on the personal perseverance of a person and on the spiritual kindness of specific heads of laboratories and deans.

The maximum amount that employed people receive is 6,000 (six thousand) rubles, this happens very rarely, the minimum is 900 (nine hundred) rubles, on average, working students receive about two thousand rubles a month, while working at least 170 hours a month.

There are different laboratories, there are with grants, there are without grants. The availability of a grant directly depends on the availability of money – that is, to get a grant, you need publications, and to write a publication, you need reagents, and reagents cost money. And in order to have money, you need to get a grant.

There are no grants in my laboratory. Generally. But I knew it from the very beginning. It's just that the topic is very interesting and relevant to me these days. Since there is no grant in my laboratory, I do not receive anything over my salary. I don't get a salary either, but soon, as they promise me, I will. Two thousand rubles a month.

Also in our university there is a stipend, almost everyone receives it, it is 2,200 (two thousand two hundred) rubles a month. Most of us live in a dormitory. We have three options for dormitories – there is a dormitory of our university, it is located in the basement, there are a lot of cockroaches, mold, dampness and Sri Lankan citizens live there, who have a very different noisy culture from ours. Accommodation in this hostel is about one and a half thousand rubles per month. I, like many, chose to live in a more civilized hostel of Lomonosov Moscow State University, in which living together in a room costs me 2,600 rubles a month. However, there is an option to live in threesomes, it's cheaper. In total, since at the moment I do not receive a salary, I do not have enough money received even to pay for living in a hostel, but if I choose the option of a Pushchen dormitory, there could even be about 700 rubles from the scholarship.

I save a lot. Pushchino is a small town and there are no big supermarkets where pastries smell delicious, so it's not difficult to do this in our Dixie and Pyaterochka. We all always walk – the city, I repeat, is tiny. Therefore, we do not spend money on transport, but we can no longer go to Moscow.

Today, when I was promised that I would finally be employed (now I have been working just like that, as a training, since September), I was told that I would receive no more than 0.2 junior researcher rates until the end of graduate school. I am studying in the first year of my master's degree. That is, another six years.

Late in the evening, usually after 20.00, I come to the hostel and see neighbors in it, whose situation is exactly the same. Of course, parents help many people and few have found remote earnings such as tutoring via Skype.

I'm 31 years old, I'm divorced and my parents don't help me.

Any person will advise me to find a job after work, so that there is what there is.

And I was offered several options by kind people. For about ten thousand a month (a huge amount!). But after 20.00, coming home, it is very difficult for me to provide myself financially for the rest of my life in Pushchino. And it threatens me for another six years. I won't even be able to buy yogurt for six years, let alone chocolate.

Someone will say about the increased scholarship. It is there. But it is given only to five out of about seventy. I was the sixth in the ranking list for an increased scholarship. This scholarship is six thousand rubles, that is, if you live in a hostel with Sri Lankans, these six thousand can be more than enough for a month of life, I have already checked - you can even eat for 4 thousand a month.

But the fact is that studying for a master's degree involves independent mastering of subjects. But I physically have no time and energy left for this, because most of my life in this city I think about where to get food, and how to properly cut a chicken according to the action in order to eat it for a week and a half, and all this happens in the deep evening, after I am actively working in the laboratory, and I'm not sitting at my desk at all, like specialist students in ordinary universities.

Once I happened to visit the USA. And I used a food bank there, that is, a bank of free food for those in need. I thought I had every right to do this, I am definitely very needy.

So, my REQUEST: in order to reduce the brain drain from the country, I ask you to organize free food distribution points for those in need working in science, provided they provide documents confirming their employment in the Russian Academy of Sciences, characteristics from the head of the laboratory (or the director of the institute, if the head himself applies) and other documents confirming the acute need.

It seems to me that the absence of thoughts about food would greatly improve the state of things and the desire to continue living in this country.

Thanks!

PS: On the eve of the issue's publication, it became known that Yulia Vershinina was awarded a scholarship by the Governor of the Moscow Region for successful students receiving professional education.

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