Karina (12)

‘Twelve is a funny age. Everyone is going through many changes. Like my friends. Some of them are getting all serious, while others are extremely childish. I found that it’s smart to choose the right person for the right situation. When I want to talk about something my childish friends are a bit exhausting, so I’ll go to the serious ones. But if want to laugh, I go to the childish ones.

I’m going through changes too. But it’s harder to say what they are when it’s about myself. I notice that other things are becoming important, to me. For example, when I was younger I really cared about getting good grades, because I didn’t want my mother to get worried or to annoy my teacher. But now that I’m twelve I’ve discovered that some teachers will you give an A for no effort at all, while others will not give you an A no matter how hard you work. I think that you need school if you want to achieve something in life, but that the most important thing is to know what you want for yourself.

I know what I want for myself: I want to become a cartoonist. Not the kind that draws on paper, but an animator who makes films. I read recently that there are as many as 100 applicants for four spots in the study program. So you have to be extremely good. First, I need to get more practice drawing, and secondly, I need to expand my imagination. In school I made an animation last week. My heroine was princess Purpletska. She had to race a cloud to see who could reach the moon first. I let princess Purpletska win.’

Karina fled the war in Donetsk and is now building a new life in another city in Ukraine.