E126 Anna Bazarna

femininity is powerful in all its forms exceptional women rare girls must be appreciated in every way for their perspectives actions thoughts and their unique ways of being such rare girls are inspiring and this is what this podcast is all about hello my name is Aziz and my guest today is Anna Bazarna. Anna is a young European ambassador and both a student of system analysis and financial markets at Kiev Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine and living in Paris for her senior year on applied informatics and business management at PSL Dauphine Paris France which is in the world's top 26 universities and French top one ranked university. Anna is a global link research internship Mitacs awardee and opportunity for students from 17 countries to spend 12 weeks in Canada for doing research. She was also an Erasmus exchange student intern at one of the best engineering schools in France École des Mines de Nancy. Anna is currently working as a business IT specialist at Grant Thornton Company which is a British audit and financial company. Anna how are you today? Hi I'm very happy to be here thank you for invitation I'm fine feel motivated and inspired thank you for asking. I'm happy I'm honored I'm lucky to have you here and I'm very curious about you so let's explore the other side of you I'm sure a lot of people see you as a very smart and competent person as a really cool girl who does a lot of her studies and is productive and ambitious. How do you keep yourself inspired? What do you do for your mental health? How do you explore your creative sides or other sides of your personality that most people don't know about? Well at first I think for me the main motivation is communication and I really enjoy speaking with people exchanging thoughts and I really like communicating with others so I think I'm really an extrovert not introvert at all so I think that it's my source of energy and motivation and inspiration as well so yeah I really like spending time with my friends I think people who surround you are the best people and it's very important to surround you with really people who are on the same way with you so my family members my friends they always support me and they they help me keep going and not giving up not not not to stop just keep going and yeah I think they're also my main motivation. That's wonderful and very well said and it makes me wonder and ask you how was it or were you able to create such deep friendships with new people that you have met in Paris? Is it easy since you're an extrovert to reach that level of communication with new people or are such close people to you mainly those from Ukraine and those you have known for many many years? Well that's a very interesting question thank you actually I think it's always even for extroverts it's hard to start having really good friends right because mostly you can communicate with a lot of people but still they're not your close they're not so close to you but I think there are always situations in which you can see even if you don't communicate you're not so close with the person but sometimes something can happen and you can see that yeah this person can support you can give you a hand can help you can listen to you and I do have some really close friends here in Paris with we met with them like maybe a couple of months ago because I'm also a member of young European Youth Parliament and I participated in some sessions here and I'm very grateful also for this experience as I found a lot of nice people who are willing to develop to create a lot of new things and who are very creative and very energetic so yeah I still keep in contact with them and for the last months they helped me a lot with moving to France with finding here a university a program a job like everything they helped me a lot and even right now it's on already almost two months and I do my studies at PSL Dauphine and I think I have a really close friend to me a girl who who is in my group and we're studying together and she supports me a lot and the most like remarkable situation was when I read some news from from Ukraine and I got really anxious and somehow it appeared that she was next to me she was here and she helped me at that at that moment she helped me a lot and I'm very grateful to her I see the importance of people in your life and yes such energized people or kind people or good people make life really special and worth it you spoke about the importance of communication for you if you could define what is communication in the dictionary of Anna if you could explain what is special about that experience of communication maybe to introverts or to people who are socially awkward or they experience people and enjoy them in different ways not in the same way as you what is that experience of really good communication that you love how does it make you feel does it help you learn about people and grow and develop by discovering their traits or is it about enjoying the emotion of the moment and feeling present rather than thinking of the past and the future is it about the energy in a way where you feel like you're in a deep soulmate situation or what is that communication as well as what do you love about it well so for me I think there are two things how can I describe the word communication in my dictionary at first it's the ability to listen and secondary it's a vibe and I think these two things they they cannot be apart so they should be together because at first of course you should know how to listen to a person not just to hear but like really to listen to understand and to be attentive and I think it's the hardest part because pretty often we are flying somewhere in our thoughts in the sky I don't know and sometimes it's hard to to try to see yourself in a position of another person and to understand just like I'm not speaking even about to understand the person just like even to try to understand the person and also a vibe I think a vibe it's also very important because all of us we are very different we're doing different things we are living different lives and we are unique and it's absolutely okay and it's wonderful and yeah sometimes you can have this vibe match sometimes not and it's also okay you just with time and with practice I don't know communicating with people you can see that yeah with this person I'm pretty easygoing and I can easily find topics to speak about and we're like on the same wave we're we have same thoughts or we're just like have something in common not a lot of things just like one thing in common and this one thing can already be this good trigger of communicating and being friends and sometimes it's true that people are like different magnets and they they they just don't understand each other but that's also normal so I think for me the most important is right yeah it's to listen and try to understand the person and also a vibe don't be very not to be very hard person because everyone has issues in their lives and when you start also sharing how life is difficult or how is it hard to live in this world of course like it would be hard to find someone who will support you because like everyone can agree with that but still if you're vibing and you're you're like I don't know you're like a Sun like a sunshine people are trying to to get this vibe as well and they start showing same feelings and emotions that sounds so poetic and yes I would like to ask you about the vibe later but first since you can feel human beings so well and you have this ability with them what was the story of you choosing studying systems and processes mostly it's for people who want to in many ways you know when you think about systems they were developed so that people will not really do random things so that they become more like machines and reduce that emotional triggers and the the days where they have bad days or whatever trying to have stability so for you when you look at systems is there something that you learned from dealing with human beings that let you see systems analysis and all those kind of mathematical studies in a more human way or is it develop in a different part of your personality or what's the story of this choice while you since you promote listening and feeling the person you could have been like a psychoanalyst or something that would be more logically related to this skill and tendency at first I think that it's not obligatory to study psychoanalysis to be a psycho analyst and to analyze people I think every person can can do that so it's just the ability to think and again to listen attentively to process the information and to make conclusions so yeah and about my studies and I think I remember at first it was very interesting because I was always more into languages in French in English and I participated in a lot of Olympiads and I think maybe I saw myself in the future also related something something with maybe translations or more philology domain and I remember when I was about 14 years old I tried a program in classes and it was interesting but I wasn't really patient about that and I remember my teacher he told me that I okay I see that you really like languages and all of this philology and all of these topics but actually programming is the same but here you don't communicate with humans you communicate with machines so you are like a translator for machines from human language to the machines language and I think that was the moment when I started to look at this from the other angle and then I started feeling that yes I want to do something more technical and I want to I wasn't sure because of course it's very hard to decide what who you want to be in the future when you are 15 16 and even like 18 years old as you don't have experience but I think thanks to my university I became the person who I am today all of these difficulties and all of these different situations and university related with studies with as it's more technical domain and it's Polytechnic University in Kyiv and it was very hard to study and sometimes I felt that yeah maybe it's not for me maybe that's not the domain I want to to progress and to build my career but I think when you start when you start see your studies in a such a field and you start speaking with people you try to stand better what you really want and then your dreams can change your plans can change but the main goal will be approximately the same and I had a lot of different experiences I had internships in consulting I had internships in data analysis which for example me I just thought that I don't want to be like a data analyst right because it's for me a little bit boring and as a project manager where you communicate a lot with people but still here I thought that no I still want something more technical I need some technical basis some technical background in my life and now last month I do a lot of different researches in different domains but still they're related with artificial intelligence and machine learning in our life in for example in music how does it affect sounds and our how do we can how can we hear some different sounds and all of that also the artificial intelligence in culture and in history and in archaeology and this project was in Nancy at the engineering school and was also very interesting and currently I'm working on artificial intelligence in politics and in governance managed IT managed IT companies management and yeah so I think that it's always possible to find something special for you something patient a patient for you whatever you do it just it's necessary to have this desire to find it so of course if I continued doing programming just just programming or mathematics I I would be really it's not it would be hard for me to to be good in it because if you do what you're not what you're not patient about to do it's hard but still when you're trying to look okay so what can we get here how can I combine this and this artificial intelligence communication politics governance even music culture finance whatever and here when you start being creative and you start like create your future career you start building your career and you start building your life so yeah I think it's important it's important to have the motivation and the desire to do something and then you can do that and right now I'm happy because I see that my studies and my hobbies they are very related and it's interesting to combine them and to see like I'm excited to see what will I do in the future how will I use all of that and where will I be with all of these researchers and experience and interests and experience I really like that for you and to ask you because you seem to be someone who of course you're in touch with your emotions and that helps you communicate with people are you a girl who gets bored somehow easily or somewhat easily and therefore how are you able to maintain long-term studies and long-term you know learning to program and all those which require repeating the same things again and again and again until you create your expertise in it because you spoke about if you do something you don't like there is no passion and if you're speaking about passion it means if there is no passion you're bored so how do you do the boring tasks that allow you to be a good student to be able to excel in this world while at the same time there is a need for you not to be bored and not to lose that attention focus and interest okay here I think that at first you should really understand if it's absolutely normal that you're getting bored it's routine and it's normal but here I think the person should really understand okay if I abandon this thing what which consequences will I have how would will it affect my life right so because sometimes there are tasks you're for example during your studies and there is one topic like you're doing you have a lot of different classes and during one course there is one topic and it's you find it really it's boring for you and you don't you don't really like it and you see that well I will not really use it in my life maybe and you're not interested because of different I don't know different factors and here you have a choice abandon it and then to study and to say yeah I'm bored I don't need it and then you will have a lot of issues at university and you may even be expelled from university for that or you can force yourself to do that in order to achieve your main goal so to be gradated to receive to pass the exam right and to to continue your studies to to continue learning what you like so it's always the the question about the choice and for example me of course when I when I see that yes right now it's hard for me I don't understand it it's and it's the opposite of the motivational part of what I'm doing but still I see that yeah right now maybe it's really important for me to do that because tomorrow I will I can gain different fruits from that but still if I see that it's something which which is for long term and it's not where I can see myself at all and I can see that it's not just some period of my time which will lead me to some to the place I want to be it's already that place for example I will not do that and yeah so for me to keep the patience the patient to do to what you're doing at first it's also analytics so you should analyze very well what are you doing it's and it's not even about being worried or something when whatever you do you should always understand why are you doing that what will you receive from that what will you give to other people by doing that so I think it's always the choice the question of choice and it's analytics it's the analytics in our real life in our day-to-day basic situations that's so interesting that you're thinking about analytics and connecting it to life and the way you perceive and you view the world and let's go back to vibe which I had a question about first how do you explain vibe if you could explain it since it's something that you analyze a lot and you have your own conclusions and have you ever had that experience of meeting someone new that you felt instant chemistry with that you felt like you know them all your life like your soulmates or something in some way or are you a person who always requires time and multiple meetings even if you're friendly with people before you feel any of those deeper special connections for me I think vibe it's about it's about my feelings maybe it sounds a bit bizarre but still I think vibe is how you feel being with the person because all of us we are givers and receivers so we give our energy we give our emotions and feelings but we also receive it and you can be very energetic and very positive and very I don't know smiling and very nice person but still if you are in the company of people who who are sharing with really like negativity or something not really not the same things we are sharing with them right so for you it can be more stressful in some way so for me the vibe it's the feeling the emotion emotions how do I feel the exact sentiment how do I feel being with the concrete person and I think with all people like every time I meet with someone I feel differently and yeah it's something really different and it's it's always about feelings I think it's very hard to explain that it's always how you feel like that and yeah I think for someone it's something else but for me it's my own feelings how do I feel and I think it's also depends on people if we're speaking about if I had any situations when I felt like I knew the person for the whole life maybe yes but still it may be yes for an exact specific topic but when you continue communicating when you're like digging deeper you see that yeah in this situation the person understands you a lot and you can feel the connection and you feel like oh my god I I think I know you for many years but we just met but still when you change topics and you speak about other things you see that still know I don't know this person at all and this person doesn't know me this person doesn't know my life story I don't know the story of life of this person so of course time is important because time it's not only about to exchange your thoughts and experience but it's also about showing how you're interacting with each other it's about about different situations in life so yeah I think time is also important to keep people closer to you if you want to of course but it depends on different situations and it's hard to say exactly how does it work it's very different different people different places different mentalities even right because when we're speaking about for example I moved to France and here the mentality is absolutely different from Ukrainian right and you are trying to adapt to you are trying to see how people behave the the prospect of friendship is different of communication is different but still all of us we are humans right we live on the same earth but it's interesting how from country to country the communicational skills the friendship skills all of that how it differs and I think it's also interesting to see to compare and just to understand what is the best model for you right how how you can build your friendship how you can build the communication and yeah I think it's it's very it's really it really depends on the situation thank you and I'll ask you to somehow fun questions you love people and you're an extrovert at the same time there is a kind of stereotype about Eastern European girls in general that they have a bitch face and so when you've been to Canada maybe or even in France did people comment they're like oh my god she looks so angry or she looks mean even though you're friendly and open is this something you had an experience with or are you always and frequently smiling thank you for a question it's very interesting question because I never really how this had the situations when people thought that I'm from Eastern Europe just because I was very angry or acted somehow like that or was mean I think young generation we are more open-minded and we are we have access to the information right and of course there are some stereotypes but still we can understand that it's not that true there is also always some kind of truth in all of the stereotypes but it's not 100% true like I also can have a lot of different stereotypes in my head about French people for example but still it's I don't think it's I don't think it's right to to make all of all of these people the same in your heart and to make them to give them the stereotypes you know it's like cliche and you're before even knowing the person you are putting a mark that okay he's French or she's French and they will behave like that because they are French so yeah I don't really like such types of situations but I also never had them that I behaved somehow and people thought that I'm from Eastern Europe just because of my behavior no I didn't have and I don't really remember if I had some situation when I saw a person and I could say oh yeah it's a typical French or it's a typical American or something like that of course when you have friends already right and you know the person pretty good and the person can do something or say something and you can make a joke that oh that's like very Frenchie or that's very I don't know in a German way right but it's just like jokes and you're just both of you understand and you don't have this cliche in your head that this person do does that because it's French or German or whoever it can be so yeah I'm I think cliche and stereotypes they they make limits for us and they we have because of that we have our own borders in our heads and it's hard maybe to change or to be more open-minded to the world and even to find friends I think stereotypes is the opposite to the word friendship and all of that thank you I agree with you 100% and in risking stereotyping because I know and we'll speak specifically about Ukraine and I know every Ukrainian girl is unique at the same time is there something you notice that is common between the younger generation of Ukrainian girls and 2022 the teenagers and young 20 years old compared to people you met in France or from Canada etc is there something different are they maybe a mix of a bit of Korean because of kpop a bit of Japanese because of anime a bit of Hollywood and a bit of UK and the British thing mixed with the traditions and cultures of Ukraine creating a melting pot or is there something that you could share about the younger Ukrainian generation and what makes them unique and different or in any way compared to any other country in the world well this question it's really very interesting question because I'm still thinking about that I'm still observing French youth and I'm comparing it in my head with Ukrainian use youth and trying to find the the steps this the topics where we differ where we have common things and for now what I noticed is that of course every country every youth of our country different from each other but we Ukrainians we are we have this I think we are more motivated and we have this eagerness for new things and we have the openness to change and I think it's also related with our history that we are we want to live in the best country we want to build it we want to rebuild it we want to be independent and we want and it's it's so it is so not only in our nowadays life but it's also in our personality that we are more mature yeah I think if we come but if we compare people of my age for example my classmates here in France and my classmates for example in Ukraine right I can see that Ukrainians are more mature and it's good on the one hand but on the other hand it's also an inconvenience it's also like a minus right so there are both sides of it and yeah I think the difference is maybe that we are more we are willing to to change and we are willing to to progress we are willing to find something new opportunities different possibilities careers studies and we do want to do all of that and I cannot say that for example French people they don't do that no but it's just that they have another they live in the other country with another history with the other mentality and they see the life on their perspective which is also very interesting to learn to observe to see how does it work for them and it's also nice but yeah for me during these seven months I think living here in France I sometimes I can catch myself on the on the on the thought that yeah I'm sometimes very Ukrainian you know but in a good sense yeah I think my response to this question will be like that thank you I understand fully what you mean and you mentioned the last seven months so I have to ask you on February 24th the invasion the Russian invasion of Ukraine how was that day for you how did you hear about the news did you believe it how did you feel and what's the story that changed you or how did your life and situation and way of thinking change from February 24th until today for me as for many Ukrainians it changed a lot for really a lot completely I would say the life and everything changed completely on the on this day when the full-scale war started in my country I was it was early morning and at that time was working I was working remotely in Canada as a project coordinator in the IT company and I had night shift according because of the time different time zones with Canada so that night I was working the whole night and morning I was working remotely and I remember I saw the message in my chat in my group chat and one of my classmates wrote that Putin declared full-scale war and I read the message and I was like that's that cannot be true that that's cannot be true and then in a couple of minutes I heard the explosions and I live I lived I lived with my parents in the Kiev region and when I saw in the bin in the window I look at the window I saw that there was fire it was in Boryspil the airport and there was an explosion and I remember it actually it was so on the one hand it was so fast but still I spent a lot of time like this night these days it wasn't like just three or two days it was like a couple of weeks or even months and I remember my parents woke up and my dad told me that we should prepare our documents and we should prepare our the most important things and probably that we will leave soon and in a couple of days we left we went to the Western Ukraine and we were there with my relatives and I also remember that this date was Thursday if I'm not mistaken and I had the first meeting with my supervisor I was still in the Kiev region and I had a first meeting with my supervisor from Canada and there was no light I don't really remember but it was about 11 p.m. in Ukraine and like no light no nothing like that in order to keep security and I remember my professor he was a bit shocked that I I came to this meeting and I still continue I continued working and it was our first meeting with him in general and he was with camera and he asked me why why I didn't put on the camera and I explained that you know there are my countries under bomb attacks and my city as well so for our security we don't put light so I cannot even if I put on the camera you will not see me because it's dark it's night and I remember he was he was really shocked that despite all of that I continued my studies and my work and everything I did and but I think for that time it was the only the only way for me to keep myself not just stress and last and these days I worked a lot before moving to to west of Ukraine I worked a lot and I couldn't sleep and yeah but still it helped me I didn't feel that stressed I think as my mom for example yeah but from that time a lot of things changed in my life and sometimes I think that the life I have today of course a lot of people dream to live in Paris for example to go to university here to have a job here and to have this levy Parisian but sometimes I think that I was forced in some way to have it even though it was my dream but still it wasn't that I came here by myself right so I would I was forced by some situations which were not dependent they didn't depend on me and I was somehow forced to to move and to change my life to change my goals my dreams and yeah and I think it's not only for me like that it's for a lot of people and a lot of Ukrainians may have same feelings but still right now I'm happy that I'm here and I'm happy that I can continue learning studying and I I can I can continue living my life and doing things which will bring fruits not only for me but also for my country in the future as well thank you so much Anna I could feel your emotions and yes I understand I actually interviewed another Ukrainian girl who said she would have loved to travel all over the world etc but as a choice not being forced to be in other countries that does not feel happy or good or positive in any way and all I can say is Slava Ukrainy. Thank you again this was my privilege my honor such a great way to share your vibe and your soul with the world I wish you success I wish you your dream job and wonderful research and all kinds of cool people in your life and I wish peace and victory to Ukraine thank you thank you thank you very much for inviting me and for your questions it was a pleasure to speak to you to to have to spend this time with you and I really enjoyed and I wish peace not only for my country but for the whole world peace and prosperity