• • • Carol Williams, a young American honours graduate of Vassar, confirmed world traveller, writes of life under Polish Communism. What does it mean to be a young person in a totalitarian state? This article was specially written for Salient readers.

A Vivacious, dark-haired 25-year-old girl who reads Kingsley Amis and Paris Match and who occasionally splurges on a jar of Yardley face cream; a shaggy-haired young man of 29 who shipped on a merchant vessel for two years before finishing secondary school, who has studied painting and is now finishing a master's degree in the conservation and restoration of works of art; a serious, somewhat pompous young man with a degree as an automotive engineer who will go on to study industrial design as well; an exuberant young lady who has just finished her first year of teaching English in a provincial high school and who is about to depart for England on her first trip abroad.

These are Polish young people of 1965, not forced to adhere to a pattern set for them by a rigid system of state control, but individuals facing many of the same problems and choices as their counterparts in other parts of the world.

Some of the choices in education are not of their own making. At the end of secondary school comes a difficult examination called the matura, which is a prerequisite for university entrance. Then the choice, always perplexing for an 18-year-old, what shall I study? What does the future hold?

A student may start studying engineering and decide after two years that he wants to change to economics. He must start over again and his first two years are, for all practical purposes, wasted.

Then what will happen to him when he finishes studying? A doctor will not be able to work in a large city hospital; there are no places available. He will have to choose among a list of provincial towns or villages which need doctors. Teachers have more choice of location but they also must go where there are openings. Engineers, who are greatly needed in this rapidly industrialising country, are often given scholarships by particular factories with an obligation to work for that factory for five years after finishing their studies.