I taught at the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics from 2008 to 2016. When I was a student, I didn’t think I would become a lecturer and educator. Closer to graduation I realized that: a) I liked helping other students figure things out; b) in some things I was smart, and in certain things the smartest. Later I realized that I could actually create some new, unique knowledge that no one before me had recorded, but that was already much later than my student days.

And where else do you work as a lecturer if not at a university? Teaching at a university is very easy. You don’t have to sell yourself. You just have to show up in the classroom at a certain time, and the students will be led in by the hand. Whether you’re a good teacher or a bad one, on September first you are guaranteed to have new students. Thus, I took the path of least resistance.

I can’t say that I had any noticeable effect on the lives of Kharkiv residents or the whole country. Kharkiv has 1.5 million people, and over 8 years I taught, well, maybe 200 people. And if you count only the worthwhile ones, maybe 30–40 people.

Universities are that kind of classic thing that develops very slowly. A few percent a year. And KhNURE is generally developing with a negative coefficient. For a person as talented as me, that is a total dead end. I wrote several posts about this:

http://obrizan.livejournal.com/tag/университет

After leaving the university, I independently gave a master class on programming iPhone applications (http://mass.education). Once was enough to understand that I no longer want to give lectures in the standard university format. A lot of time gets spent, and only 5 people are learning.

The solution is to teach people over the internet. My current creative plans:

— in 2017, teach 1,000 people over the internet;
— in 2018, teach 10,000 people over the internet;
— in 2019, teach 100,000 people over the internet.

But I’m not sure about 2019. Maybe more than a hundred thousand. I still haven’t learned how to look three years ahead; it’s all foggy there.