what life was like in the hostel and what it taught us
I’ll film you sleeping and post it on the Internet: what life was like in the hostel and what it taught us
Hello! My name is Dima Ragozin, I am a front-end developer at KTS.
While studying at the Moscow Polytechnic University, I lived in a dormitory for 2 years. Sometimes the lack of personal space really bothered me, and I looked for different ways to help me concentrate.
I asked colleagues and friends who also lived in the dorm: did they have to face the same problems? And if so, how did they deal with them?
I hope our experience will help readers better organize their work processes and communication with people around them – in the dorm, office or at home.
The author and the heroes of the article do not consider anyone’s way of acting or living to be wrong – except in cases where it directly violates the laws of the country in which you live. In other cases, the characters simply talk about their impressions.
What will be in the article:
How to get at your neighbor: the story of Dima Ragozin
Dima Ragozin
front-end developer of the KTS special projects department
The Moscow Polytechnic University dormitory is an ordinary apartment building, where several people live in each apartment. The apartments are different, I lived in a 1-room apartment with two neighbors.
The hardest thing was to withstand the various quirks in the behavior of the neighbors. One of them left mountains of garbage and moldy pots in the kitchen. I myself mostly ate ready-made food, which had to be heated – but even this was difficult to do. The path to the microwave was littered with bags, packaging and leftover food.
This neighbor loved to cook, but his food often burned. The apartment filled with smoke, the alarm went off, the guard and the commandant came. If the guard could understand and forgive, then the commandant began to assess the condition of the apartment. According to the law of such cases, at these moments the room became a terrible mess. There would be scandals, and we would have to drop everything we were doing and clean up the apartment.
The third tenant of our apartment did not cause any negative feelings, but he studied at night and loudly leafed through his textbooks. This made it difficult to sleep, and towards the end of living in the hostel I put together a combo: I slept in a mask, with earplugs, and noise-cancelling headphones and white noise.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that such abstraction can be harmful in the most literal sense. One day I slept through another smoke and didn’t even hear the guard come. In ordinary life, you definitely shouldn’t miss such things, so I don’t recommend turning a blind eye and ears to problems in the literal and figurative sense. If you sleep with earplugs, ask your neighbors to wake you up if necessary.
Dima's lifehacks
Organize your personal space. For work, I turned on unobtrusive background music in my headphones: lofi radio, shoegaze or synthwave
Before calling, ask your neighbors to keep quiet and look decent. If they fall into the background, there is no need to attract the attention of your teachers, classmates or colleagues
Speak up at least sometimes. If something is bothering you, but negotiations are difficult, make a list of the most annoying problems and start talking about them in descending order of irritation
Analyze the situation. If you want to move into a separate apartment, but for some reason you doubt it, write down the pros and cons of living with neighbors. Then this list can relieve you of doubts about your decision.
Plan your workload. It makes sense to start the week with a rough planning of your affairs, allocating hours for tasks related to study, work and leisure. Each next day can be planned more accurately, taking into account what has already been done
Set your priorities. It’s good if you don’t have “excellent student syndrome.” Unfortunately, I have, so I spend a lot of time and effort on all the tasks. I advise you to invest only in things that are truly important to you. In addition, sincere interest helps you concentrate well, which means it will be more difficult for you to be distracted
Reduce time costs. If you study and work at the same time, try to transfer as many tasks as possible to a remote format in order to spend less time traveling to work or study. At the same time, try not to spend all your time in one room: try to periodically visit coworking spaces and other places suitable for work
“O” means “Office”: the story of Vitaly Cherkov
Vitaly Cherkov
front-end team lead KTS
I studied at MSTU. Bauman and lived in a dormitory until he finished his studies. I started working before graduating from university and could have moved out long ago, but I decided to save money on housing in Moscow. Some people run away to a rented apartment at the first opportunity, but I’m not very picky. Therefore, living in the capital practically for free seemed like a very good idea to me.
The only thing I didn’t like were aesthetic everyday issues. It's especially frustrating to return to a hostel after a vacation from the best apartments carefully selected on Airbnb. Otherwise everything was fine.
I managed to organize my work and studies well. I focused on work issues, and spent only the necessary amount of time on studying to avoid debt. In addition, when I started working in a good office, I spent almost all my time there – and even came to work on educational projects. That's why I only spent the night in the hostel.
Now I remember life in the hostel without pleasure, but this period taught me to cooperate with different people. Now, if necessary, I can easily live with a lack of personal space.
At some point in 2022, I temporarily moved to live in Kazakhstan. My friends and colleagues and I rented one 3-room apartment for six people. Everyone worked in IT, and probably because of this, everyone started having online meetings around the same time. All sectors of the apartment were paralyzed until the end of the calls: 3 rooms, kitchen, corridor and balcony. No one could just go to another department without disturbing the neighbors. At the end of our time together, everyone was tired of this lifestyle, but I felt normal.
Lifehacks Vitaly
Learn to get along with people. If you want to save stress and productivity, don’t strain relationships and look for options for comfortable coexistence
Work outside the home. Find a good office, go out at least sometimes to work in a cafe or coworking space. Spending a lot of time in close quarters with neighbors can be difficult
Set your priorities. The most difficult thing in my entire life in the hostel was when I had to combine work, studying at a university and studying under the Technopark program. I devoted most of my time to work and Technopark, and spent a minimum of time and effort on studying so that I would not have debts
If you don't get enough sleep, try using earplugs. It only dawned on me in my final years, which is a pity
I’ll film you sleeping and post it on the Internet: the story of Nastya Ishchenko
Nastya Ishchenko
PR manager of KTS and Gate agency
During my first years of study at HSE, I lived in a dormitory. Just like in the Polytechnic University or the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, this is an ordinary house with apartments. I lived in a 3-room apartment for eight people with two bathrooms.
My roommate was Olya, a girl from the mathematics department. She had no friends, she almost never left her room. Olya studied all the time and was at the top of the student rankings. Despite her brilliant mind, we immediately had difficulties communicating.
I often typed reports and essays and visited classes where there was a lot of talking. Extraneous sounds instantly infuriated Olya, and she could easily run out of the room, loudly slamming the door.
I also combined studying and teaching English. I left for work in the morning and one day came earlier than usual. Olya told me bluntly: “Nastya, what are you doing? Actually, I planned to be alone today. Go away, will you?”
At first I turned a blind eye to all these things. It seemed to me that Olya was odd, but not a bad person in herself. But the culmination was the story of another student who used to live in my place. She told why she moved: it turned out that Olya once threatened to film her sleeping and post her on the Internet if she didn’t stop writing with pen on paper.
This story made me angry. Olya’s former neighbor is an overly kind and sympathetic person. Threatening her, knowing that there would be no resistance, seemed rude to me. Olya, for example, did not voice threats to me, probably because she knew that I would not remain silent in response.
In the end, Olya ruined relations with absolutely everyone in our apartment, so we decided to go to the head of the hostel. There we honestly explained the situation and asked for help. As a result, he thought for several days, came to us with an inspection and found a compromise solution that suited everyone – Olya moved to another apartment with more suitable conditions for her. After that, we all couldn’t believe for a few more days that “it was possible.”
Living in a hostel taught me to lobby for my interests in a situation where there is no pressure over a person: you can only choose the right words and ask politely. This came in handy when working with journalists and other PR people.
Nastya's lifehacks
Try to come to an agreement. I lived with a difficult neighbor for two years. All this time, during conflicts, I tried to talk, to solve problems with words – sometimes it worked. We resolved all the minor conflicts that we had with other neighbors in one conversation
Set boundaries. Immediately agree on what you can do and what you can’t do. For example, in our apartment it’s normal to ask to be quieter. And there are party apartments without any rules – where they drink beer and play board games until nightfall
Don't be patient. If you can’t come to an agreement and settle in, try to move out – or move your neighbor
Think strategically. When space became available in the room, I immediately began looking for a suitable roommate. And when new students move into the room, you can immediately agree on the rules so that in the future everyone will be comfortable
Be diplomatic and understand the hierarchy. I had been trying to move into another room for a long time, but I didn’t know that there was a deadline for moving. Therefore, I came a day late, and the manager refused me. Instead of trying to talk like a human being, I got angry and wrote to his manager. But nothing worthwhile came of it, so I just wasted my nerves. Next time I took these mistakes into account and approached the issue gently. When we came to the manager of the entire apartment, we did not push in, but asked for opinions and asked for advice on how to solve the problem.
Always say “Yes”: the story of Artyom Bakulev
Artyom Bakulev
backend team lead KTS
When I first arrived in Moscow, I first went to the Young Baumanets School. While I was participating in it, all the places in the hostel had already been taken away. But the commandant looked at the lists of students and found a place in an apartment with second-year students. I thought that I would have no problems getting along with older guys, and agreed.
It turned out even better than I expected: due to a small mistake, I was placed in a room with second-year master's students. One of them already worked at Kaspersky Lab, and the other at Tinkoff. During our time together, I managed to look at their lives, listen to how they work in IT and decide for myself whether I want to be a programmer in the future. Sometimes they helped me with my homework.
When the year ended, my neighbors graduated and I had to move. There was an opportunity to take a place in a room with students from Kazakhstan and India. They spoke mostly English among themselves, and I saw a new opportunity: to improve their language level.
We lived in the same apartment until graduation. During this time, I spoke English about 2% of the time because it turned out to be difficult. But I stopped being afraid of language barriers and now I communicate more with people when traveling. My new neighbors also developed an interest in other cultures in me – for example, I often saw interesting dishes of Kazakh and Indian cuisine in our refrigerator.
We are still friends and sometimes correspond.
This is not to say that I liked everything about the hostel. The condition of the housing there is acceptable, but it is still uncomfortable. We had cockroaches that liked to get into my large, heavy and very hot laptop. Once I was teaching a robotics class to schoolchildren aged 8-10 years old and suddenly noticed that all the guys froze. Turning around, I saw a cockroach crawling along the wall. I had to take a napkin and let him out into the street, and for two more classes the students remained silent in class and looked at me with respect.
Artyom's lifehacks
Don't turn down opportunities. Not everyone gets the chance to learn something from their neighbors, but still try to think how you can benefit from the situation
Don't be afraid to try new things. Even if something doesn’t work out – like I did with English – new experience will definitely make you better
Help each other. One of my classmates and future colleagues lived alone in a room and went home for the weekend. I took the keys from her and spent the whole weekend quietly doing homework and Technopark projects.
Don't be afraid of cockroaches. But don’t specifically seek out their company.
Conclusion: top tips
Despite the different stories, some advice is common to almost everyone.
Firstly, everyone advises to negotiate more and endure less. If you don't put the problem on the table, you will never get rid of it. Of course, we need to be diplomatic. If you periodically talk calmly with the people you live with, sooner or later you will find a solution.
Secondly, prioritize and plan. You can’t do everything, everywhere and at once, without compromising your health. When you are limited in space and time, you have to choose: what to do “excellently”, what is enough and “satisfactory”, and what should be completely gotten rid of and forgotten.
Oh yes, and earplugs!
