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The University in St. Petersburg Invited Me to Teach a Class Again
Although I accepted, admittedly, it was a difficult decision for me, both morally and politically.
I have been teaching students in some capacity at the local university in St. Petersburg, Russia for roughly 20 years. It began with a box of mangos in 2005 and took off from there.
The mango was my prop, and I had volunteers from an audience of 200 to create marketing and communications strategies for the mangos. It was a big hit, and after initial confusion and uncertainty, the kids did a great job because I told them, “Anything goes!” Those are two words that most Russian students will never hear from a teacher, and when told that there was no wrong answer — also something they would never hear from a teacher — they had a ball. In 2017, I was invited back not as a guest lecturer but as an adjunct professor. I had as many as four lectures a week before COVID, then it dropped to two weekly.
The war has whittled my class schedule down to once a week and only during the spring semester — and only online, of course. My big head now floats above the 70-plus students, which in June will be 50, and I do my best to share my madness for using creativity to develop marketing and communication strategies with these poor kids.
