Deep superficiality I will not write about the finals of some particularly large all-Russian student competition in the field of product and technical I just left with this feeling, but it has nothing to do with the competition. It seems that there are active and big-headed participants, good universities, economic and career incentives, basically everyone is very motivated, but no one has really sunk into the subject. Didn't research, didn't research, didn't look critically at the task at hand and its accompanying materials. They accepted it as truth, went through the top trends and news, absorbed clichés and came up with nicely packaged but mediocre solutions. It is clear that you do not expect ready-made and immediately applicable solutions from student competitions, so you value more the approach to the projectile and the process behind the work, and where the bright minds often did not even imagine that the object is multi-layered and requires digging - there is simply no such reflex or habit. It could be attributed to AI or generational characteristics, but I don't think that's the point. Rather, their educational environment didn't really create situations where delving into anything with epistemic disbelief was required at all. It's just sad.