Dear academics, dear students, administrators, emeriti, all members of the community of the Faculty of Philology,
We are about to start our strangest academic year during the last decades of Vilnius University, a year scarred by a pandemic virus. However, the long-lasting history of the University and of the Faculty continues with us working on our tasks and celebrating our festive events. As usual, the first of September is very different to people of different generations: some of us remember our numerous first-of-Septembers when we see school children with flowers in their hands flocking to start their first school year, others are getting ready for their umpteenth meeting with young people who see the world of school, University and books as the most fascinating, still others gaze in awe at academics expecting them to tell the young people the best ways leading to the stars.
I would like to congratulate you all on the occasion of the beginning of a new academic year starting 1st September 2020 and welcome you at the Faculty of Philology, a kingdom of words and texts. You, of all people, are capable of identifying the value and weight of words and texts, and know how to do it better than others. I wish you could use angry words sparingly and be generous with kind words, I wish we could help the world understand that how we speak and write is no less important than what we say and write.
I wish this academic year could be a year of our community, when we could join our efforts not only for our small communities, such as departments, research groups or study programmes. Let us join our efforts for the Faculty, for the University, for Lithuania and the world. I know that we can do it. I would like to take this opportunity and thank you each and every one of you for being with us, for your creativity, for your spirit of camaraderie that you bring to our multilingual community. Your unique personalities are the best signposts on the University’s and the world’s journey to meanings and senses of words and texts.
Professor Inesa Šeškauskienė
Dean of the Faculty of Philology
