I love hobbies: Marina Khismatullina climbs mountains and breaks stereotypes

What do students and staff do once they put their books aside? Assistant professor Marina Khismatullina can truly relax once she’s high up in the mountains.  

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“I chose a very appropriate country to live in with a hobby like alpinism”, jokes Marina Khismatullina (Erasmus School of Economics) while sitting at a wooden table at the eighth floor of the Akragon building in the centre of Rotterdam, where Beest Boulders is located. “So, in between my adventures in the mountains, I boulder to train strength and balance. I also run a lot to train my stamina”, the Russian mathematician says.

Alpinism is the skill of climbing a mountain. It’s a combination of hiking to the foot of a summit and climbing the steep rocks to reach the summit. “It’s very technical. And you need a lot of endurance.”

No thoughts

“The mountain is my calm place”, explains Marina. She reminisces how she felt during a trip to the Kilimanjaro, with 5895 meters the highest mountain of Africa: “I didn’t think about work. About the renovation I needed to do. About my midlife crisis. I only though about primal things: when’s the next stop, what can I eat and am I getting wet or not.”

Shedding stereoypes

“I did not really have hobbies until I was in my thirties. I only identified myself with work. I never considered myself a sporty person.” In Russia, she explains, people are often put into boxes. “If you’re smart, you’re only smart. If you’re a woman, you’re only a woman.” Marina was projecting a lot of these cultural stereotypes on herself.

A few years ago, Marina experienced a crisis’ as she calls it. She went to psychotherapy and learned to define herself by more than just her work. “It was very painful. I had to relearn a lot about myself.”

Marina hopes to pass on her lessons to her students. She is, for example, quite active on social media: “I post a lot of reels and stories, mostly about my adventures. With my videos I want to show that you can be anything you want. You can be a woman in a male dominated field. You can boulder with painted nails. You can learn new things in your thirties.” The thing she hopes her students will take away from her Instagram? “That professors are people too. With full lives and hobbies that we love.”