User:Geevee/Autobiography

Evgeny Gerashchenko (Евге́ний Влади́мирович Гера́щенко) (born 21 February 1989 in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan) is third-year student of SPbSU ITMO. Also known as Geevee.

School years
Evgeny was born and grew up in Pavlodar, the city at North of Kazakhstan. His father, Vladimir Gerashchenko, was (and still is) principal of "Programservice" computer firm, his mother, Irina Gerashchenko, was manager of service department in the same firm.

He went to "Styx" school at the age of 6 and was the youngest in his class. He has been studying English since the second form. In early years he was interested in mathematics, he even took a silver medal at City Olympiad in Mathematics being in fourth form.

After studying for 5 years in "Styx", Evgeny proceeded to School-lyceum Number 8, the most perspective school of the city. At ninth grade he participated in City Olympiad in Informatics at first time. Then he passed to Regional and even to Republical Olympiad in Informatics. He took the second place at National Olympiad, held in Öskemen. But he hadn't passed elimination trainings, so he didn't participated in International Olympiad (IOI).

In tenth form Evgeny proceeded with his trainings for informatics. Unfortunately, he did not participate in National Olympiad because of chickenpox. Even though, he did participate in eliminating training, but didn't pass it, again. In summer of 2004, after finishing the tenth grade, Evgeny participated in Summer Computing School in Perm, Russia.

In eleventh form he had luckily won National Olympiad, he was the first among all grades, too. But he hadn't passed to IOI, probably because of unfair shuffling in eliminating training.

In that year, he participated in All-Russia Team Programming Olympiad, and his team solved 5 tasks, winning third-grade diploma.

After school finals and school-leaving party he went to Saint Petersburg, to pass entrance examinationed to SPbSU ITMO.

Studying in university
In 2005 Evgeny entered Computer Technologies Department of Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics. Although he had an opportunity to participate in programming contests, trying to pass to ICPC, he refused it deliberately. Evgeny explained that he has become tired of olympiads, contests and trainings, and they are nothing but waste of time and nerves. Although, he hasn't lose touch with contests at all, now he helps organizing it beeing a volunteer.

In the beginning of 2006 he became interested in playing guitar, after his dormitory roommate had brought his acoustic guitar from home. He has never had any guitar lessons, so he is self-taught guitarist. His first tryings were just playing from tabs songs of his favorite bands. In November of 2006 he has bought his own guitar Squier Bullet Strat.

Evgeny and Wikipedia
Evgeny had firstly got known about Wikipedia in 2004, in article in Computerra magazine. But only after one year he realized how powerful it is. Now if he doubts about his knowledge of something, he prefers to use Wikipedia at first, instead of Google. Evgeny had become a wikipedian on 2 April 2006, his first major contribution was translation of Kazakhstani tenge article from Russian Wikipedia. He believes that Wikipedia will grow for years, stopping at nothing, and pages are only a beginning. Editing Wikipedia is his hobby.