Interview with alum Dasha Davidovskaya

November 8, 2021

Dasha Davidovskaya, Class 2018

 

For those out there who do not know you, can you please introduce yourself? 

Hi! My name is Dasha Davidouskaya and I graduated from UWC Maastricht in 2018. I am in my last year of studies at Luther College, and I am graduating in May 2022! Yeeeh! In college, I developed interests in social sciences like sociology, anthropology, and gender studies. I have always been passionate about sustainability and love nature. I live in Iowa and I am lucky to be in a space with a lot of green areas!

If you think about your time at UWC Maastricht, what comes to your mind? 

When I think about UWC Maastricht, I think about our community. You will be surprised but often I feel nostalgic about our residential meetings on Sundays, where we mainly discussed housekeeping and Dutch law, but it was something beautiful and intimate just for us, students. Walking down the weird stairs felt great. I miss our high-quality class discussions. I’ve always been inspired by my classmates’ passion for subjects and global issues. I miss feelings of unity, value, and accomplishment during conferences and culture weeks. I miss that energy! 

What have you been up to since graduating from UWC Maastricht? 

I have been living the life of an international student on a small residential college campus in rural Iowa. I have been focusing a lot on growing academically. I enjoyed Liberal Arts a lot! I have been lucky enough to have the community of UWC alums in my college to reflect on my experience in the US. The UWC community has always been my support system in adjustment and adaptation in America. 

I am very honored and proud to be a UWCM alum. It’s a place where the world and myself could finally meet each other! 

In what ways were you able to live the mission or give back to the UWC community in the past year? 

I wish I was able to give back more but I only felt that over the summer when I went to Armenia to facilitate UWC short Course on UWC Dilijan Campus. 

You mentioned the short course in Armenia. What was it about? What was your role? What was the experience like for you?

I was fortunate to be a part of the UWC short course in Armenia last summer. I was a facilitator, meaning that I had functions of delivering workshops surrounding issues of identity, global issues, and social entrepreneurship. I also had the honor to guide participants through the transformation of being strangers to creating a community together. I was there to ensure a mini UWC experience for teenagers from all over the world, but mainly for the youth from the Post-Soviet countries.

My experience was amazing. I do not think I will ever find words to describe my emotions precisely, but I was happy every single minute and I felt that I was right where I was supposed to be. I had a chance to live a UWC experience again as an adult with more accountability but with the same sense of idealism! I really enjoyed my role as a mentor/facilitator because I could see participants open up to each other and new ideas every day. Realizing that I could have contributed to their amazing progress was crazy, mind-blowing, and beyond belief. 

Would you recommend other alumni to be involved in giving back to the movement? What might be some of the options? 

Our first step would be to read the alumni letters and respond to Iva’s messages. Haha! No, seriously. Btw, I have never been able to guess the alumni in the photo. Have you? I think staying in touch within the alumni network is very helpful, even though I have not been that good at it myself. Responding to each other’s emails/messages, checking on our UWC friends is the first step to giving back to the movement. Maybe someone needs you as a friend, or as a potential colleague or project partner.