Beyond the Classroom (Blog Competition 2025 Round 3 Winner)

The school curriculum is like train tracks—it takes you on a set path, but if you want to explore
beyond, you have to walk on your own. And I don’t just want to walk—I want to run.

My name is Viсtoria, I’m almost 15, and for the past few years, I’ve been learning not only at school but outside of it too. Ancient Greek, philosophy, literature, history—this is my personal study plan. Why
Because school often moves too slowly, while the world of knowledge moves fast.

Let’s start with Ancient Greek. Why learn a language no one speaks anymore? When I first encountered Ancient Greek, I was struck by how alive a “dead” language could feel.

It all began with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. When I first met Henry Winter – that brilliant, obsessive character who moved through the world like a scholar from another era – I didn’t just admire him. I envied him. Specifically, I envied how he could switch between English and Ancient Greek as effortlessly as breathing, how the language seemed to shape his very thoughts. There was a scene where he corrected another student’s pronunciation with such natural authority – that moment lives rent-free in my mind.

I started small:

1. Alpha, beta, gamma – writing the alphabet until my hand cramped
2. Homeric hymns – reading translations side-by-side with the original
3. Grammar drills – those terrifying verb conjugations that made Latin look easy

There were moments I wanted to quit. But then I’d remember Henry analyzing a Greek text with
terrifying intensity, and I’d push through.

Philosophy: Questions Without Answers

Philosophy is freedom. School barely touches it, but it teaches you to ask questions that have
no ready answers. Reading Nietzsche, Camus, or even Socrates’ dialogues, I learn to think—not
just memorize.

A Literary Awakening

Books used to seem like boring doors in other worlds – the ones I didn’t want to knock on. At school they made me read a classic, and I did it with the same enthusiasm with which I brushed my teeth: mechanically, because «must». Tolstoy? Boring. Shakespeare? Impassable. I thought that literature is just a set of stories to be told in class.

But then something clicked.

It happened unexpectedly – not with the classic, but with a modern book that I read for myself, not for school. Suddenly it turned out that sentences can not just transmit information, but breathe. What they can: Sting, warm, leave a mark.

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