How I Fell in Love with Math

The story of an unlikely mathematician

Math I Hated

At some point in high school, I completely lost interest in institutional education. Maybe it was the school itself — a fairly uninspiring place that didn’t spark imagination or love for learning. Whatever the reason, just about everything seemed more interesting than school: friends, relationships, Irish dancing, programming, and various coding projects I had on the Internet at the time.

Everything but school.

At my school, your final diploma grade was calculated as the average of all your grades across high school. Which meant: if your grades were decent in the first half, the second half couldn’t really ruin them. Naturally, I calculated the average for every subject to figure out which ones would land me an OK grade no matter what. Next to each of those classes, I wrote “FUCK IT” — and stopped attending altogether.

I hated everything about school. Including math.

Why in the world was I supposed to substitute numbers into the discriminant formula, then plug that into another formula, just to get a new number the teacher seemed so desperate for? I had no idea what I was doing — or why. At the time, I didn’t even know I was finding the “roots” of a polynomial, because no one had explained what “roots” meant.

For me, it was a pointless exercise in attention span — a careful implementation of meaningless algorithms. For some reason, that’s what they decided they wanted from me. Fortunately, my attention span was sufficient to handle the mindless manipulations without difficulty — but honestly, it would’ve felt the same if they’d asked me to memorize license plates of passing cars.

I hadn’t learned a single proof by the time I finished high school. We had geometry lessons where the teacher danced around triangles and lines, mumbling shamanic words about axioms and postulates — but if you asked me how to find the midpoint of a segment, I’d point at it with my finger. If you told me I must use a compass, I’d point with the compass.

The only school math I could do was execute algorithms. I could find the roots of a quadratic equation, but I couldn’t appreciate Vieta’s formulas. I could compute an angle using the dot product, but I never internalized why some angles in a circle are twice some others. I was pretty good at logarithms — which probably says more about logarithm problems than it did about me.

And of course, I never participated in math olympiads. No math circles, no summer camps, no challenging problems. I never wrote “Q.E.D.” at the end of a proof. I had no idea that some kids took Olympiads seriously — that they could compete in the All-Russian Olympiad, even the International Mathematical Olympiad, and then go on to attend the best universities in the world.

Yes, I was that kid — the one who raised their hand and asked the teacher if we’d ever actually need the discriminant formula in real life. Ironically, I’m probably the only student in the history of my mediocre school who ended up using it for anything remotely meaningful.

I thought that if I could only choose, I would never do math in my life.

Math I Loved

But little did I know — I was doing math all the time! I was always trying to understand the things around me, but I had no idea that proper understanding is, essentially, math.

When I was a kid, I played cards with my older friends — and I always lost. But I desperately wanted to win, so when I was home, I’d sit on the sofa with my foot wedged in the crack, lay out cards for myself and an imaginary opponent, and try to come up with an optimal strategy. At first, I knew all their cards. Later, I started hiding one card at a time, trying to get closer to the actual playing conditions — estimating the probability of different hands and figuring out the best move in each case. One could say that I was toying with probabilistic combinatorial game theory years before I was teaching it at Stanford!

There are so many other examples from games. When I played World of Warcraft, I’d calculate the ultimate armor setup for my character. When I played board games with friends, I’d write out all the strategic options to find the best move. I even used math when I started coding and wrote little games of my own — like building a basic physics engine or figuring out when a line intersects a rectangle. (It is way harder than you think.)

Another time, I was building a small website that displayed a new random word and its definition each day. I needed a way to fetch a random row from my database that would change daily. Amazingly, I managed to find my own post on a PHP forum from May 2012 – back when I was fifteen. Which incidentally gives me perspective – I have been coding for over thirteen years now!

Here’s the translation of my post:

I need to get a random row from my MySQL database every day, but in such a way that it’s not possible to find out what tomorrow’s row will be. I thought about storing yesterday’s date and comparing it to today’s, and if the date changed, selecting a new row and updating the date in the database. But this solution isn’t beautiful. How can I make it better?

Granted, the question wasn’t well written. But something important was going on: I wasn’t satisfied with an ugly solution. I wanted a beautiful one. A user named artoodetoo suggested using a random seed for the pseudorandom generator. To this day it makes me smile to read that I agreed to use their solution only when they reassured me – in their words – “it’s a fucking beautiful solution. It’s ingenious and it works.”

Despite the solution being more abstract — using a random seed and a pseudorandom number generator is more complicated than just storing a date in a database — I was ready to learn it. I was even willing to read through pages of documentation in English (which I didn’t speak at the time) just to understand how to use it. I preferred the more conceptually sophisticated approach and was willing to do the extra work — simply because it was more beautiful.

Well — that’s how math works.

I should also mention that I loved magic tricks as a kid. Many of the more striking tricks fall into the category of mentalism — specifically, the type known as “mathemagic.” I wanted to perform calculations faster than a calculator as part of my magic routine, so I started learning the basics of mental arithmetic. Later, I even published a post about squaring numbers from 1 to 100. The post got over 150,000 views, which was extremely satisfying given that it was my first experience putting anything out on the Internet.

All of this happened before I turned sixteen. At that time I would passionately tell anyone who would listen that I hate math. Because to me, math meant school math – “Follow the Algorithm and Get the Grade”! But I had no idea that so much of what I was doing could be considered math: not the content, but rather my attitude toward the problems.

At the time, I was also thinking I wouldn’t go to college. I figured I’d just build websites for money. Or do freelance work. Or, worst case, get a programming job in my hometown. I planned to save up, move out of my parents’ house, find some shady way to dodge the draft (military service in Russia is mandatory unless you go to college or have health issues), and live happily ever after — no more years of meaningless schooling.

I couldn’t imagine voluntarily spending any more time in any kind of school. I’d already spent eleven (!) years in prison. Thanks – but no thanks.

Falling in Love

My mother insisted that I apply to college. Unlike in the United States, higher education in Russia is free for good students — and you even receive a small scholarship. So eventually, I agreed. The plan was simple: get the scholarship in the first semester, skip all the classes, and get expelled after a few months. Easy money with no effort.

I made it easy for myself. I picked the closest university to my house — the Polytechnic Institute — and an obscure program my grades guaranteed I’d get into: engineering for factory manufacturing. I didn’t even bother applying anywhere else.

Right after submitting my application, I spent the summer hitchhiking across Russia. I found out I’d been accepted while crashing on a couch staying with strangers I met on Couchsurfing. The next morning, I’d already forgotten about it — I had to wake up at 6 a.m. to hit the road if I wanted to make it to the next city by nightfall. College hadn’t occupied any part of my mind.

So that’s how I ended up at the Polytechnic Institute of the Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk, studying “computer-aided design systems in mechanical engineering.” On paper, anyway. My plan was to ignore all the classes, get the scholarship for one semester, and get expelled the next.

I showed up at the university on the first day of the semester to fill out paperwork and pick up my student debit card, where the scholarship would be deposited. After all, the place was a ten-minute walk from my house. I figured I might as well check it out. And since I was already in the building, I decided to stop by a few lectures — just to see what this whole college thing was about.

And there it was — Mathematics.

It was hidden under a ridiculous label in the schedule: “History of Algebra and Geometry” (lecture) by Rybkov M.V. The course with this idiotic name was taught by a young mathematician, Mikhail Rybkov, who had somehow ended up teaching math at the Polytechnic University almost by accident. From the very beginning, he told us that he would teach this class differently. He hated the syllabus he was provided, and so he decided he would teach this class differently. Instead, he said, he would try to explain the ideas — and their proofs.

This was my first real lecture in mathematics.

We started with complex numbers. First, we defined them. Then we learned how to add and multiply them. I wasn’t impressed. Next, we represented them in trigonometric form. That was weird, but fine. And then, we wrote down de Moivre’s formula — the one for raising a complex number to a power. Ah, another algorithm.

And then the teacher said, “Now we’re going to prove this formula.”

I felt my heart skip.

Prove it? You mean it’s not just another algorithm to memorize?

Prove it? I don’t need to believe you that it is true?

Prove it? I can verify it — step by step — and know it’s true, not because someone said so, but because I understand it myself? Be measure of my confidence in the truth of this statement?

We proceeded with the proof. And I was completely overwhelmed — swept away by a flood of new sensations, thoughts, and philosophical feelings. It felt like I had touched the truth. It was an otherworldly experience. All this time, there had been an entire dimension around me I hadn’t even known existed. Accessible and unapproachable. Comprehensible and unfathomable. Sacred and trivial.

It changed everything.

After the lecture, I went straight to the library and grabbed books on the philosophy and history of mathematics — Klein, Russell, Stillwell. I devoured them one after another.

Full of enthusiasm, I started talking to the teacher every day after class. I asked what it was like to do research, to be a mathematician. No one in my family had a college education. I had never even spoken to someone from academia before. What did those people actually do? It turned out that being a mathematician meant you think a lot about math, talk to other people who like math, read math papers, teach math, and — occasionally (I was still naive enough to believe!) — grade homework.

I was sold.

In one semester, instead of getting expelled — as I had planned — I passed all my exams with excellence. Now my plan is to transfer to the Institute of Mathematics, still within the same Siberian Federal University.

That was the beginning of my math journey. All thanks to one teacher. Thank you, Mikhail!

Knocking on Professors’ Doors

The math department was not impressed with my credentials.

My Russian-SAT-equivalent math score wasn’t particularly impressive, and I had zero prior experience in mathematics. I had also missed all the core first-semester math major classes. How was I supposed to transfer into the program and make up that entire curriculum gap on my own?

That was my first of many experiences convincing people I could do something without any supporting evidence — only sheer willpower and an unreasonable amount of passion.

And so I transferred into the math department. To catch up, I had to cover everything I’d missed while keeping up with my current courses — essentially doing double the work. I attended lectures during the day and studied the first-semester material on my own in my free time. It was demanding, but it would prove to be an essential skill as you will see very soon.

I learned real analysis, abstract algebra, discrete mathematics, and differential equations. I learned about set cardinality and how infinities come in different “sizes.” I learned the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.

And guess what? I finally learned about those polynomial roots that my high school teachers were so obsessed with. I even learned that every polynomial with real coefficients and degree greater than one has at least one complex root. I was finally at peace.

But learning beautiful math wasn’t enough. I wanted to do mathematics. I wanted to do research.

So, I did the most logical thing I could think of. On my literal first day in the department, I started walking around, knocking on every professor’s office door, asking if they could give me a research problem to work on. From their perspective, I was just a random transfer student with no background — basically a stranger asking for a thesis problem.

Unsurprisingly, they all said no. All but one.

The only person who agreed to work with me was the dean of the department, Alexander Kytmanov. As a test, he gave me some problems involving symmetric functions — specifically, expressing power sums in terms of elementary symmetric functions in closed determinant form. I eventually solved them all while doing double course load work. I suppose that it was enough evidence to show that I wasn’t completely hopeless, because we started to work on research problems together.

Our research focused on the zeros of entire functions and extending the notion of the resultant to entire functions. It was fairly algebraic and didn’t involve much complex analysis at first, but I learned about residues and how the logarithmic derivative can be used to extract information about a function’s zeros.

Eventually, I got my first real results. I found expressions for the power sums of an entire function in terms of its series coefficients, and proposed a notion of a resultant for entire functions. I wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations — and it was accepted.

It was time to start talking math in front of other people.

Trust me, I’m a Dr. (Dr. Dre)

Student conferences are the perfect playground for young mathematicians before stepping into the real conferences. They’re quite different — for example, judges rate students’ talks and award the best ones at the end. My first student conference was the International Scientific Student Conference in Novosibirsk, a Siberian city near my hometown (just 400–500 miles away, which counts as “near” in Russia).

It was my first time attending any academic event. It didn’t even occur to me that I was supposed to dress up or try to look professional, so I gave my talk wearing a T-shirt that said: “Trust me, I’m a Dr. (Dr. Dre).”

Despite the outfit — and my very informal slides (one of them read, “Systems of algebraic equations are well understood. Systems of non-algebraic equations are not.”) — the judges evidently trusted Dr. Dre, because I won the first-prize award for best talk. They handed me a diploma and a piece of paper that granted automatic admission to the master’s program at Novosibirsk University.

Within a year of transferring into the math department, I was fully immersed in academic life. I was studying math, writing papers, attending conferences, and even included in research grants — with an actual grant salary! I traveled to cities across Russia for student conferences, and eventually, I felt ready to attend real ones — where you don’t get cute certificates, but you do meet working mathematicians from other universities.

The next major event in my life happened at one such conference, in the small town of Koryazhma. It was the first serious conference I attended — the first where many established mathematicians were actually present and presenting. That’s where I met Professors A.B. and E.S.

In conversations with them, I quickly realized how little math I really knew. Professor A.B. told me that if I wanted a serious academic future, I should transfer to the Department of Mathematics at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow — arguably one of the best math departments in Russia, and in the world.

But I had a problem: I couldn’t afford to live in Moscow. My parents wouldn’t even be able to afford a plane ticket, let alone cover my living expenses. Professor A.B. assured me that it would be possible to get by — I could work as a teaching assistant, tutor students, and eventually join research grants to support myself. But at that moment, I had no money and no job offers.

There was another problem: in order to transfer to the department, I had to pass the transfer exam. The professors offered to write a mock version to test whether I had a real shot. Professor A.B. wrote a complex analysis exam. Professor E.S. wrote an algebra exam.

The plan was to take both exams the next day — during the conference. I had less than 24 hours to prepare.

The Transfer Exam

Despite it being a mock exam, I wanted to treat it with full seriousness.

I asked the professors which topics the exams would cover. The complex analysis topics sounded familiar enough — I’d been doing research in that area.

But the algebra topics… It was hopeless. It was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. When I asked Professor E.S. what to expect on the algebra exam, he casually replied, “Oh, why, — groups, rings, linear algebra, all the standard stuff.” All the standard stuff. Except I didn’t know what groups and rings were and I had only a shallow idea about linear algebra. I was so embarrassed that I just nodded and pretended it all made sense.

Back at the hotel, I started cramming. I read about groups and rings, their definitions, their properties — but there was no way a single night was enough to actually learn anything meaningful. I just wasn’t ready. And even though it was “just” a mock exam, it was supposed to determine whether I should even try to transfer. I was desperate.

Complex Analysis Exam

The complex analysis exam came first. I recognized every topic because it was related to my research. I was particularly familiar with residue problems, and of the problems were residue-based. I solved them confidently.

I felt like I had a real chance.

Algebra Exam

Problem 1: List all abelian groups of a given order.

I had no idea what abelian groups were. I wrote nonsense. In hindsight, I would’ve been better off if I wrote nothing.

Problem 2: Raise a given 2x2 matrix A to the 100th power.

This problem was clearly meant to test my understanding of eigenvectors, change of basis, or the Cayley-Hamilton theorem, which I knew nothing about. But hey — it was just the 100th power. So I took a brute-force route: I squared the matrix repeatedly — A^2, A^4, A^8, and so on — until I got to A^64. Then I wrote: A^100 = A^64 * A^32 * A^4. A total hack. No theory involved. But at least I had an answer. If the question had asked for A^n instead of A^100, I would’ve been completely and irreversibly screwed.

Problem 3: Express some power sums in terms of elementary symmetric polynomials.

It was a blessing. It was the exact question my advisor gave me on my first day in the math department. I solved it in ten seconds – I simply remembered all the formulas by heart.

Problem 4: Determine whether a group of order 56 is solvable.

It was a disaster. I didn’t know what a solvable group was. I couldn’t write anything meaningful. Nothing. Except… the night before, I’d read a random sentence on a math forum: “All groups of order less than 60 are solvable.” I didn’t understand what it meant, but I remembered it. So I wrote that sentence down — verbatim, without any explanation. It wasn’t even a solution, but I had nothing else to offer.

Problem 5:

I don’t even have the last problem, but by that point, I was sure none of it mattered. The only problems I solved felt like lucky guesses or brute-force hacks.

I reasonably assumed that I had failed.

Pure Luck

To pass the transfer exams, I needed at least 6/10 on both complex analysis and algebra.

The next day, I got my results. I got my complex analysis grade: 9/10. I felt happy. Later that day, I got my algebra grade: 6/10.

Now’s probably the right moment to reveal two things I only learned later: First, this “mock exam” turned out to be my actual transfer exam. My solutions were scanned and submitted with my official application to the Higher School of Economics. Second, I later met students who also tried to transfer — and got 5/10 on the algebra exam. They were rejected.

So this wasn’t just an empty trial. It was real. And I passed by one point.

It remains one of the most absurdly lucky moments of my life. I didn’t pass that exam because I knew the material — I didn’t. I passed because I stitched together just enough hacks, brute force, and vaguely remembered facts to scrape together 6/10. It wasn’t my merit. It was pure luck. But luck was on my side.

Squeezing Four Years Into Two in Moscow

I returned from the conference in mid-August. The academic year in Moscow started on September 1st. So I told my parents — with less than two weeks’ notice — that I was moving to the capital to study at a different university.

Understandably, they freaked out. Somehow, I convinced my parents that everything would be fine. I’m not sure I believed it myself. I had never lived on my own before. I had no money. My parents had no money. I had no idea where I would live, how I’d support myself, or what exactly I was getting into. I couldn’t even afford the flight to Moscow — I had to borrow money from Professor A.B. just to buy the ticket.

I moved to Moscow on August 31st, 2016.

I had arrived at the Higher School of Economics, Faculty of Mathematics — one of the best math programs in Russia, and arguably among the best in the world. The names on office doors were names I had seen in textbooks. My classmates were graduates of elite Moscow schools, children of professors, international olympiad medalists, participants of famous math camps where they had done real research with legendary Russian mathematicians. I couldn’t imagine a better place to flourish.

But I had one serious problem: I was wildly, ridiculously, glaringly underprepared.

This wasn’t your regular impostor syndrome. I was a third-year math student in one of the best programs in the world, and I barely knew what groups, rings, or fields were. Imagine a physics major in their third year who had never studied Newton’s laws. That was me.

The situation was dire. Not only was I enrolled in advanced courses completely beyond my comprehension, I also had to make up for the full two years of coursework I had missed at my previous university — all at the same time. Thanks to bureaucratic requirements, I also had to take history, English, and useless courses like “Personal and Social Safety”. My schedule was maxed out — I was legally enrolled in every academic unit the university would allow.

To exaggerate only slightly: I had to complete a four-year program in just two.

To support myself, I worked as a teaching assistant at several universities, tutored students, competed for scholarships, joined research grants, and tried to win every possible award I could find. Occasionally, I had literally zero rubles in my bank account — but this isn’t a story about financial struggles.

And don’t forget research. I started working on random matrices, gave conference talks, and participated in multiple grants. I even traveled abroad for the first time — to Italy — to give my first talk in English.

Everything was happening at once. Living on my own for the first time. Working multiple jobs. Taking a full third-year course load. Catching up on two years of curriculum. Research. Applying to PhD programs. It’s a miracle I found time to make friends and enjoy the city of Moscow at all.

It was truly the hardest time of my life.

I still remember one particularly humbling moment. I went to the first class on my very first day: Functional Analysis. At the end of the lecture, we were given a problem set. The first problem — just a warm-up, meant to review the basics — completely defeated me. I asked a classmate for help. They couldn’t believe I didn’t know how to do it.

I couldn’t have done it alone. After class, every day, I met with mathematicians and asked questions — hours and hours of questions. And people helped me. I’ll always be grateful. Among everyone, professor Alexey Klimenko deserves special thanks. He spent months working with me — multiple hours a day, several days a week — helping me understand material across all of my courses. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Alexey’s immeasurable help, I would never have caught up.

But eventually, with the help of many kind and generous people, I completed the curriculum gap, passed all my courses, published a preprint on random matrices, and graduated with honors in the Summer of 2018.

It was the craziest two years of my life. And I loved every second.

Applying to Ph.D. Programs

Of course, I planned to stay in math a little longer. I decided to apply to Ph.D. programs so I could continue doing research and remain in academia.

But my application situation was complicated. On one hand, I had major gaps in my education. I hadn’t taken as many advanced courses as my classmates. And I did poorly on the GRE math test — in fact Berkeley University had a page where they explicitly wrote on their website that my score would not be adequate. On the other hand, I had managed to do some research as an undergrad, which could serve as evidence that I wasn’t entirely hopeless when it came to producing original mathematics.

Then there was the money. Applications are expensive. Each one cost around $75, plus $45 just to send test scores. Between the GRE General, the GRE Subject Test, and the TOEFL, I needed nearly $600 just for exams. I didn’t have that kind of money. In fact, I had never in my life possessed that much money at once.

Given the costs and my gaps in my education, applying to Ph.D. programs in math wasn’t exactly the obvious choice. A safer option would’ve been to apply for a master’s degree in Moscow, take more classes, mature as a researcher, and then apply to Ph.D. programs later. In fact, my advisor in Moscow recommended this route. It was a perfectly reasonable recommendation.

But that’s just not how I do things.

The application process was another little adventure. I put my materials together as best I could. I found people willing to write recommendation letters. And once again, generous people in academia stepped in — lending me the money I needed, which I promised to pay back from my Ph.D. salary.

And finally, I applied.

Stanford, Quals, and Mother

It’s impossible to adequately describe what it feels like to receive your first Ph.D. offer.

The experience couldn’t have been more different from the time I applied to the nearest university for undergrad and went hitchhiking immediately afterward. Back then, I didn’t care. This time, I cared deeply. This time, it felt like the long-awaited reward for everything that came before: the endless transfers, the grueling catch-up work, the financial stress of surviving in Moscow, the borrowed money, the multiple jobs — all in pursuit of a dream that started with a random math lecture at Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic University, and which I was still chasing.

I got several offers from math Ph.D. programs. I chose Stanford. After two impossible years of pressure and exhaustion, I moved to California. The program was five years long. I had a consistent salary. I had worked harder than I ever thought possible to get there.

Surely, I could finally relax a little?

At Stanford, all math Ph.D. students must pass qualifying exams in Algebra and Real Analysis. Many of my classmates passed them right away — before the academic year even began. But for me, with my educational gaps, it wasn’t going that easy.

And honestly, I couldn’t focus. For the first time in my life, I was living abroad. I finally had spare money. I felt like I deserve a break after everything I’d gone through in Moscow — like I had earned the right to slow down. And so I relaxed. As part of the relaxation was taking theater classes instead of preparing for the quals.

So I failed the quals. And failed miserably. I was the only person in the class who has failed both exams. I had one more chance to retake the quals. If I failed again, I would be expelled from Stanford. Everyone reassured me that nobody fails the second time. “It doesn’t happen,” they said.

But from my perspective, it was happening. And it felt like an existential threat to my journey.

It meant I couldn’t afford to relax — at least not yet. I spent the summer preparing for the retake. I felt a lot of guilt. Every day I didn’t spend studying felt like a betrayal of myself. It was a hard time.

I passed. But barely. My scores were just above the cutoff. It reminded me of my 6/10 algebra exam back in that Koryazhma conference. Afterward, the dean of graduate studies asked to meet with me privately. We talked about my poor performance. I was warned: low scores might affect how potential advisors viewed me. I was reminded that I still had significant gaps in my education — and that I couldn’t afford to forget that. The quals were over, but the pressure wasn’t.

After I failed the first round of quals, I called my mother.

She said maybe it was for the best. Maybe it shows that it is too hard for me. Maybe it was a mistake to think I could make it at a top American university. Maybe I should come back to Russia.

And for this one phone call, I still can’t forgive her.

The following year, I started working with Daniel Bump — an excellent and supportive advisor — and began working on integrable lattice models and their connections to the representation theory of p-adic groups. That collaboration became the foundation of my Ph.D. research at Stanford. I published my first preprint Combinatorics of Iwahori Whittaker Functions. Then, I published several more preprints and papers and continued my work in that field. I also organized the Solvable Lattice Models Seminar, likely the largest seminars in the field at that time.

In May 2023, I defended my dissertation, Combinatorics of Integrable Lattice Models. My research focused on integrable lattice models, representation theory, and algebraic combinatorics. I’m deeply grateful to my advisor, Daniel Bump, and to my thesis committee: Persi Diaconis, Sourav Chatterjee, Lance Dixon, and Andy Hardt.

After completing my Ph.D., I joined UNC Chapel Hill as a postdoc and teaching assistant professor. While there, I helped lead the Physically Inspired Math Seminar and co-organized a special session on “Solvable Lattice Models and Their Applications” at the American Mathematical Society Joint Mathematics Meetings — the largest annual gathering of mathematicians in the world.

It took me years to feel comfortable with my background — to stop feeling like the guy from the polytechnic who somehow made it to Moscow without knowing basic math. The guy who gave a talk at a conference without really knowing what he was doing. The guy who got into Stanford by accident. The guy who failed his quals.

The guy who maybe should’ve gone back to Russia.

Jet Lag

A formless face stares at its own reflection.
Is it early? Or late? It's up to the clock
To address this question.

But when you cross over the world,
And lose the rest of your mental fitness,
The clock begins to contradict itself —
Like an unreliable witness.

No wonder the boarding is taking so long,
When you fly to a place you will never belong.

March 2018
At the airport before the first trip to Stanford

Russian original

Jet Lag

Бесформенное лицо со взглядом,
Пересекающим диагональ экрана.
Рано. Или поздно? — решат часы.

Однако,
Оставляя позади опоясанную землю,
Их показания, как правило,
Запутывают следствие.

Чего не надо
Ожидающему рейса
На незаслуженное место.

Март 2018
В аэропорту перед поездкой в Стэнфорд

To Teachers

It all started with one teacher. Just one teacher at a polytechnic institute in Krasnoyarsk, teaching “History of Algebra and Geometry” to future engineers. One ambitious, passionate teacher who chose to bring math to life in a classroom where no one expected it. That was enough. One teacher was enough to ignite a genuine curiosity — and change my life.

Through personal conversations with Mikhail, I learned what math could be. I learned what an academic path looked like. I learned that this world wasn’t closed off to me — that it was real, and maybe even within reach.

Thank you, Mikhail. My PhD thesis was dedicated to you:

“I dedicate this thesis to my first math teacher, Mikhail Rybkov. His passion for teaching and unwavering dedication to unveiling the beauty of mathematics ignited my curiosity and set me on this transformative journey. It was during the first lecture of “History of Algebra and Geometry” at Siberian Federal University in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, that I had a life-altering moment. Mikhail embodies the transformative power a teacher can have on a student’s life. Without him, I may never have discovered the joy and fulfillment that comes from delving into the world of mathematics. Thank you, Mikhail, for launching my journey.”

If you teach — anything at all — please, bring your passion to the classroom. Your attitude and love for the subject can reach someone. Even a course with a ridiculous title, taught to engineers in a forgotten university in Siberia, can change someone’s life.

My story is proof.

“The mistakes of doctors are easily visible, but the mistakes of teachers are no less costly.” — The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!