Hi, I'm Sofía,

just quit my studies to turn my life around.

Only one year and a half away from graduating from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), I made the difficult decision to leave Russia and my studies behind.

When asked why, the easy answer is because of the war... but in reality the idea had already been in my mind for some time already. I felt I had beat the major challenges in that stage of my life:

learn Russian
get into the MIPT physics and math program with scholarship
survive Russian education system (check out this post)
get into dream department (comp physics) where everyone loves linux
code cool fluid simulation
give a talk at an international conference
become an official Physicist: pass and ace the State Qualification Exam in Physics

What I couldn't accomplish, though:

finish school with an intact nervous system
recover from ongoing burn-out
have time, energy and money to pursue non-school related passions

Basically, I craved for the next step

Our (Santiago's and mine) plan was to finish studying and move to Europe to look for a job. However, why exactly did we have to things in that particular order? It felt as if we were stuck postponing life until we were in Europe.

When I have my own money and my own space and more time... I will start doing x, y and z.

So, that's why we decided to stop postponing and start living.

The decision wasn't easy, it was a huge risk, and there were many challenges and fears we had to overcome.

4 days of traveling and sleeping in airports to get out of Russia
survive weeks of job interviews despite social anxiety
bureaucracy hell
2 long months of uncertainty, not knowing if we'd make it

After the most difficult ~2 months of my life, here we are finally, starting a new life in Germany.