Larisa Shoigu meeting with colleagues in Medical College, Kyzyl. November, 7 2007- Larisa Kuzhugetovna, why did you choose the profession of a physician?

- I am ashamed to admit it, but it was a spontaneous decision. My friends and classmates, Nina Kravtsova and Tanya Filippova were planning to go to medical school, but I vacillated between journalistics or mathematics, I was interested in the Novosibirsk mathematics school. As far as journalistics were concerned, Papa had a serious talk with me, telling me what I remembered for the rest of my life: as a journalist, you either have to be very good, or you’ll spend the rest of your life correcting proofs. Mathematics somehow spontaneously sloughed off.

So I followed my friends into medicine. And I never regretted it.

But we did not just dive in without thinking. We decided to test ourselves beforehand – can we or can’t we? And we tested ourselves in the morgue.