My name is Shkurenko Andrey and I was born on the 6th of September, 1990 in Donetsk. All members of my big family, especially my father Shkurenko Gennadiy, enjoyed my birth. Only my mother, Shkurenko Elena, was distressed, because she was afraid of bringing up the boy.

I didn’t go to any kindergarten. I was taught at home by my grandmother, who had been working as a teacher of elementary school for all her life. So I had been able to read, write and count before I was five. I hated fairytales so my first book was a novel by Jules Verne “Children of Captain Grant”.

I was a curious child, so my hobbies changed quickly. Political geography was, perhaps, the main interest of my childhood. Still being a little kid I memorized the capitals of the exotic countries crawling on the world map. So I went to school fully armed possessing all the necessary knowledge.

School

As I mentioned, I acquired teaching material of the first form in the preschool years so I entered the 2V form of the Donetsk school №89 according to the results of the exams.  I didn’t associate pleasant memories with elementary school. My relationship with the first teacher was not very good and I didn’t like communication with classmates. I went to school to obtain the necessary knowledge. Amount of my interests continued to expand and football added to them on the 20th of May, 1998. This sport has become an important part of my life.

There was another school in my life - musical. When I was seven, I came there and after singing the song “The grasshopper sat in the grass” I was appointed to the piano class. During the seven years of endless rehearsals and different concerts I was improving my skills in playing piano. The evidence of that is the impressive number of awards and prizes for winning in various competitions.

Meanwhile, my favorite subjects in secondary school were physics, mathematics and geography. Because of participation in competitions of scientific works on various subjects, beginning with physics and ending with English and Ukrainian, I hadn’t got free time. However, I found the opportunity to play football with my friends and play chess with my father.

Entering the university was absolutely painless for me. I thought, I had chosen my future profession and joined the students of the Telecommunication Networks and Systems major at the Donetsk National Technical University.

University

I met my group TCS06g on the 31st of August at the organizational meeting of students of the CITA faculty. Impressions of that meeting were controversial. On the one hand it wasn’t easy for 15-year old teenager to get acquainted with the new collective, whose members were older than he. On the other hand it was interesting to spend time with new company.

At first I could not understand why the older generation remembers the student’s years with a nostalgic. Awareness of the charm of this period came to me in the senior courses.  University gave me all these lectures, labs, tests and exams, true friends. Being the student I didn’t participate in contests and competitions. I focused on self-education. So, I continued to study English. Knowledge of the foreign language helped me to meet interesting people from different countries with whom I continue to communicate now.

My scientific work started at the fifth course. Under the guidance of Professor Alexander Vorontsov I write master’s theses entitled "Research and improvement of existing methods for measuring the bit error rate in data channels of communication systems". I have no illusions about the fact that the method I will propose will find a practical application. There is another passion of mine - sports journalism. Earlier I mentioned that football has become an integral part of my life. So, at this moment I work with a leading Ukrainian sports website, for which I write a variety of analytical materials and lead stories.

Future plans

First of all, I want to graduate the university successfully and get a master's degree. Unfortunately, or not, I'm not going to link my destiny to my specialization. I want to fulfill myself as a sports journalist: to try myself in commentator walk of life and become one of the leading journalists of Ukraine