About Me
I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia (then the Soviet Union). My family immigrated to the United States in 1989. I grew up for the most part in Omaha, Nebraska. As a middle- and high-school student, I had two main hobbies: math and growing giant pumpkins. My pumpkins won first prize at the Douglas County Fair in 1999 and at the Nebraska State Fair in 1999 and 2001, set an official Nebraska state record, and put me on local and national news multiple times.
In college, I got into the habit of traveling. I studied math abroad in Budapest, Hungary and then again in Moscow, Russia. In all, I have now lived in four countries and visited many other I have always enjoyed adventure, and in particular, seeing fascinating, exotic, or historically important places that other people usually overlook. We have many such places right here in St. Louis, and I even live in one of them.
In the last few years, I have become very interested in self-improvement and psychology (particularly evolutionary psychology) as it relates to self-improvement. I have, to a surprising degree, been able to apply some of these principles to my math teaching. Besides this, I have always used competition to motivate myself to stay in shape. My current hobby is running. For the last two years my team, Off Constantly, has won the relay division of the St. Louis Marathon and we hope to win again next year. I am also an amateur caver. St. Louis County has the largest number of caves of any major metropolitan area in the world, and I try to take full advantage of that.