My name is Denys Piddubnyi. I am Ukrainian. I was born is a small city Sumy on the left band of the river Symka. My cities situates about fifty miles from Russian border, which is why we are having a huge impact of Russian language and culture to my education and history of my family. As a lot of us know URRS was formally enacted on December 26’s, 1991 and all fifing republic got independents. Ukraine was one of them.

I was born in 1989 and officially I was a USSR citizen for three years and after it I become an Ukrainian. I don’t remember a lot from that time that’s why I can’t tell you much about “how was it?” Well when I asked my parents and friends of the family all what they were telling me is that: “It was a nice time with slight difficulties in getting products from behind the “Iron wall”. But over all their life were stable and full of possibilities even without strong connections with government or rich parents behind shoulder. Prices were low, education was free and if you work hard and ambitious, you will do well in life.” – from the memories of a good friend of my family, Roman.

My mother Ella was born in Murmansk. It is a port city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia (nowadays), located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, an inlet of the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, close to the Russia’s borders with Norway and Finland. She got an education there and came to Sumy to work at the textile factory right after her graduation from college. She is a professional seamstress. She met my father Alexander in Sumy and in a couple of years they got married.

My father Alexander was born in small city close to Sumy. At the age of 17 he got enforced into the USSR army and been deployed to Transnistria is a partially recognized state located mostly on a strip of land between the River Dniester and the eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine. Since its declaration of independence in 1990. This state’s claims to territory east of the River Dniester and to the city of Bender and the localities surrounding it on the west bank are largely unrecognized. Transnistria lies in the historical region of Bessarabia. By that time USSR. After serving two years there he came back to Sumy and found a job as a cab driver.

As you can see from my background my parents never been reach and never get a university degree or high education, I can say for them it was a priority in their life’s, that I can be the first person in our family with diploma from university. My education started in 1996 when I went to the first class of the public school. Educational system in my country in 1996 was a very similar to education in USSR, “old school” teachers with their own views on education; I remember they invested more time in how we are holding our pens instead of what we are writing. I remember my first teacher asked my mother to school several times because I held my pen in the left hand instead of the right one and she suggested her to re-train me to write with my right hand. But it is just one memory from my young years. Over all education was interesting and difficult as I understand now, because we learner many subjects and material people learning in college here. I got good marks till about middle school and after it my education got a little down because I invested more time into my friends and joy. I graduated from school in 2006 with a couple of C’s but over all I get a good marks.

When I got enrolled into Sumy State University I was 16 years old. I was far away from education and from thoughts about who I want to be in my future life I believe that not many people able to tell who they want to be in future and how they want to live their lives at this age. I got my first computer in 2004 and probably I can mark this as the point in my life which helped me to choose my future degree. I choose Compute Information Sciences as my major and programming as my minor. In my country computer sciences was developed with a huge gap compare to the rest of the world so for me choosing this major was a huge possibility for future carrier. We were the first group of student who were accepted to this course and it was the first time in history when university created this major. Professors were not sure what to give us and because of that we got a lot of math, programming, statistic and design of the mechanisms. All this crazy classes were mixed with pre-required classes such as history, Literature and Ukrainian language. To say that it was a little difficult is not to say anything. We got more than thirty hours of programming together with design and calculations of margin of safety. A couple of times I thought about dropping of the university, but my perseverance and friends around me in class pushed me thru it. I really liked my class and our support of each other was incredible.

I want to make a step back and tell you a little about my English language in my own country. I started to learn English in kindergarten. I believe it was the only one place where four years kids knew how to say basic, but words, in other language. My parent saw that I like English and they found a good school for me where I can improve and get a good knowledge of English for my future. Unfortunately English in university was not a priority and four years without practicing it left a big mark on it.

To understand Russians you need to understand their relationship to education in Russian community. Education for Russians here is like a symbol of success in community, you can compare it to the big, house or an expansive car. If you look at the numbers between immigrants the average of 67% finished high school, compare to 80.3% of Russian immigrants. 61% of the Russian people in United States have a Bachelor Degree or above, 19% have an equivalent of the US Associated Degree and 17 % finished college in US. Russians families choose the college or university very carefully. Usually a specific part of the whole budget goes to the educational needs of the family in future. Parents do everything what they can to put kids onto the right way in middle and high school so the kids are getting high scores in school for their own future.