Chapter 3 - “Unbelievable! Poles Are Happy”: Looking toward the Future

Summary

Józef: Building a Future

Jozef 's ancestors lived for generations in a mountain village that was flooded when the massive Solina dam was built by the state-socialist government in the late 1960s. Jozef grew up on the edge of the reservoir, where displaced residents were relocated. The child of farmers, he attended the agricultural high school in Lesko. As he describes below, his decision to get a higher education was not part of a life plan. Rather, he responded to historical circumstances, made decisions based on his friendships, and took advantage of chance opportunities. Like most of the participants in this study, during his teens and early twenties, Jozef and his close friends Przemek, Darek and Maciek tended not to think about the future. While it seemed likely that state socialism was a thing of the past, there was still a great deal of uncertainty about the direction the country would take. Instead, Jozef adopted a “wait and see” attitude, and remained open to whatever opportunities came his way. This strategy worked for him in that, by the time he graduated from college, he managed to land a good job in public administration. Over the years, he has gained a position of prominence in local government, and built a spacious home on a hill overlooking his native village, where he lives with his wife and three children.

In 2005, he told his story as follows:

When I was in school, I was one of those kids who didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know what I was capable of doing. I was lucky to find my way to the university, and later to my job. After we finished technical [high] school, none of my friends had any concrete plans. One day, Przemek and I decided to go to Rzeszow and look for a university. We didn't know what else to do. We ended up submitting our papers at the WSP [Wyższa Szkoła Pedagogiczna; teachers college], where we had heard it was easy to get into. Darek and Maciek ended up going to the Studium Medyczne [a two-year medical college] in Sanok. Then, Przemek heard about the possibility of getting into the Akademia Rolnicza [agricultural university] in the economics program, so he went and took the exam. So I borrowed my papers from the WSP, and applied at the Akademia Rolnicza, too.