“WHEN I WAS A STUDENT” WITH PROF. DR. GORDAN KALAJDZIEV: I WAS AN EXCELLENT STUDENT AND VERY POPULAR AT THE SAME TIME

Does a student imagine himself as a professor at the same faculty where he studied, received his master’s degree and his doctorate? It wasn’t prof. Dr. Gordan Kalajdziev’s goal, but he has been working at the Faculty of Law for more than 30 years, selflessly transferring his knowledge to students. This time we turned on the time machine for prof. Dr. Kalajdziev, a full-time professor at the Faculty of Law at the University “St. Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje. In the section “When I was a student”, which we create in cooperation with fakulteti.mk, we visited the days of the many faculty lectures, socializing, challenges.

– When 30 to 50 people listen to you as you speak, it becomes a challenge. When you are a university professor, you are not only a professor to the students, the whole society expects you to explain what happens to many things that interest the public – he said in an interview with Fakulteti.mk.

They died of laughter at school when I appeared in “pom-pom pants”

Born in Skopje, up to the third grade, the professor lived on the place where the Cathedral is now located, and due to its construction, their house was demolished. So from “Pestaloci” he continued to study in the primary school “Jan Amos Komenski”.

– At school they died of laughter when I appeared in “pom-pom pants”, then fashionable in France. However, I was pleased to be the center of attention for the girls, and I had to compete with all the boys. I also remember that the boys were forbidden to have long hair, and we all wanted to be like the Beatles. Even then I started collecting records, Rolling Stones, Lennon and McCartney, Hendrix, Janice Joplin … Skopje was different, in the summer we bathed in a pond, even in the canals in the park. Circuses kept coming, and diaries were popular.

Following the footsteps of his older sister, he continued his secondary education at the high school “Josip Broz-Tito”.

– There has always been an opinion that good students are nerds and are not automatically popular. I, on the contrary, was a great student and popular at the same time. I struggled more in high school than in college. In college you go to an exam if you want, but in high school, it is different. It feels like a disaster if you get caught unprepared for a test. I remember that although I was studying a lot, I was always afraid that some teacher will catch me off guard. It was most frightening when I was away because I was skiing. When I came back, Mishevska, a math teacher, was deliberately taking me out in front of the class; and standing in front of a math problem you do not know how to solve is – neither more nor less – humiliating. When I finished my second year of high school, my friends and I were on our first long train ride through Europe. I remember that we called our girlfriends at home, on a landline, so you have to talk to her father first, eerie … in order to have a girlfriend, you had to formally “propose” to her.

Studying should not be fetishized

According to Kalajdziev, studying law today is much easier than when he studied.

– Now most students go to exams with just a few days of studying. It shouldn’t be like that. Unfortunately, the criteria for passing and completing the studies are half as high as in my time. There are several factors for that, but the large number of faculties in the country have lowered the criteria everywhere. We are probably record holders by faculties by population. The coronavirus, on the other hand, exhausted us. There is no one at the faculty, and the student’s relationship with the faculty, colleagues and professors is below any level. Fortunately today the situation is better with continuing education. Lawyers go to many trainings and seminars, which is good, and they upgrade themselves professionally on a daily level. Times are dynamic, college is just the foundation, learning the basic rules and the meaning of law, a sense of justice and fairness, but the main learning is yet to come, with every subject, project, every working day. That is why studying should not be fetishized, it only gives the direction. In fact, I studied Marxist sciences, and later I educated myself by reading many books, scientific stays and the like. I learned a lot from Rawls, Hart, Dvorkin … There is no end to knowledge …

The Faculty of Law reached its zenith in the 1980s

– I do not have any lawyers from my relatives, except prof. Pikaric, who is my uncle, so the desire to study law is certainly not genetic.

The beginnings of college were not only a new educational stage of his life, but it was then that his life changed drastically.

– Life did not leave me much choice. I was part of the first generation to serve in the military right after high school. The first year of studies was difficult for me, among other things, due to the discontinuity with the military service. Then I got married unexpectedly early. The girl I had been dating since high school became pregnant and it was a kind of farewell to my youth. Like in the song “River” by Bruce Springsteen. Like it or not, I had to be responsible, I had one child, then another. At the same time, I quickly learned the challenges of law, where principles are important and what you want to achieve. Prof. Marjanovic had particularly interesting lectures and a way of examining. I, in fact, did not pass my exam traditionally, I passed it while I was going to see how the exam was going to be, and that, like the teaching, was discussed by everyone present. There are no such professors today, it was a golden generation of the Faculty of Law that reached its zenith perhaps in the eighties.

Kalajdziev spent almost two years at the most famous Max Planck Institute in Germany, six months in Birmingham and had several study stays in Norway, the United States, France, but despite his extensive experience abroad, he graduated, obtained a master’s degree and a doctorate at the University where he teaches today.

– I believe that the Faculty of Law is enough to give you a foundation, and postgraduate studies abroad are a big bonus; one should always see how one learns and works in the world, we can not compare ourselves with the developed countries.

According to the Law on Higher Education, in one and a half years no one came to report corruption, says Kalajdziev, appointed anti-corruption officer at UKIM.

– I mentioned a while ago that a large number of faculties have lowered the threshold of knowledge required to pass the exam. This, little by little, has made it so easy to pass the exam that it leaves no room for corruption. In my opinion, this situation is worse than corruption.

What would you advise students who are reading this interview at the moment?

– You do not have to study just to pass the exam. It would be foolish to do something you do not know; in that sense studies make our lives easier.

Made by: Aleksandra Ovcharska-Bela