As TUMO Gyumri student Lilit Galstyan continues to produce her special reports around the Shirak region, she finds herself in the village of Hatsik. There, she meets fellow TUMOian Susanna Nahapetyan. Here’s Lilit’s multimedia story about Susanna.

Acrobatics, playing the piano and taking care of her animals.16 year old Susanna’s interests don’t end there. She also edits and translates text for Wikipedia, and she embroiders. She’s determined to become an actor or a film director, but says that even if she ends up adopting another profession, it will somehow be connected to art.

Susanna is convinced that to be able to juggle so many interests, you need to have a strong body, which she’s been able to develop thanks to her village. She says she grew up in Hatsik a bit like Mowgli, surrounded by nature and all kinds of animals. Now she also has a cat that her father brought back from Shushi during the war. They named the cat Shushi.

During her two years at TUMO, Susanna has explored coding, filmmaking, animation and new media, but she says that her primary passion is music. “I couldn’t imagine there was so much more to music beyond the classical education I had received. I’ve learned a lot of digital tools like Logic Pro and Ableton, and I started to play drums and the guitar in a recent lab.”

Lately, Susanna started a new project. She is continuing her great grandfather’s work and collecting her family archives. She’s also interviewing her relatives to find the most interesting facts and stories about her relatives. She says it’s a great way to meet the older people in her family and to get to know them better.

The commute from Hatsik to Gyumri is about 20 minutes, but Susanna wouldn’t be the girl we know if she allowed herself to waste that time. She always has a book in her backpack and has trained herself to ignore the clatter of the bus. So, twice a week, she squeezes in 20 minutes of learning while making the trip to go learn at TUMO.