Interview with an Alumnus SAS | Dmitry Pakhomov

How did you choose a university and a field of study?

I decided on my profile right away. The closest thing to me was the sphere of information technologies and programming. When applying, I considered many IT-related universities in different cities of the country — St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk. At the same time, I was very interested in other disciplines and areas of knowledge, so I seriously considered the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) and chose it for three reasons — English language, geographical location, and elective courses.

At SAS, in-depth study of major subjects starts fr om the 3rd year. Don't you think you missed the opportunity to dive deeper into the field?

This is actually a difficult question. I think it's in the first years of study that the biggest transformations happen to you. All the professors I often think of are fr om my first year of teaching. For example, Zachary Reyna, who used to work at SAS, taught me a nuclear course called “Writing, Thinking, Analyzing, and Interpreting” and an elective course called “What is the Anthropocene?” That's when some kind of change happened in me. These courses were catalysts for significant unseen changes. Electives at SAS are an opportunity to spread your wings and try your hand at several fields, which has proven to be the biggest plus for me. On the one hand, the nuclear program gives you experience as an academic and broadens your horizons, which helps you grow and change imperceptibly. In my daily activities, I don't even notice how these first two years of non-core training affected me, but comparing myself now and before SAS, I see big differences. For example, I can give a presentation or analyze a text on a whole new level than before. Everything is learned in comparison, it's just that all new skills become natural for you and disappear fr om your field of vision. That's the main privilege of two non-core years — you develop your basic skills (soft skills). On the other hand, for those who just want to go into IT, all this may not be necessary. If you're interested in pure IT and only want to program, I don't think SAS would be the best choice. Here you gain experience as an analyst, develop project thinking, work a lot with people, so if you want to be not an ordinary cog in the machine, but to control this machine, then this education may suit you. Besides, now there is a network program with DSTU to study IT-profile. In the third year all students of my profile studied at the Institute of Advanced Technologies (School X) of DSTU for one quarter. It was a very rewarding experience, different from SAS. In a very short time we worked with companies from the industry and gained new professional skills.

What is your thesis project about?

My thesis project is a fully academic work on the development of an automatic drum transcription software, which I named [DrummerScore]. It recognizes the drum parts in any musical composition and produces drum notes. This app can be used by beginning drummers as well as teaching professionals. Let's say a student wants to play some rhythm at a concert, so the teacher, in order to write out the musical score, has to spend about ten hours agonizingly writing out each note manually. But with my software, you can get the result immediately: you just load the song into the app, edit the generated material a bit, and pass it on to the student. In parallel with designing the application and testing its performance, I conducted research on whether people even need what I'm developing and whether there are other ready-made solutions on the market. Overall, the whole project came out of personal experience with drum transcription, as I am a drummer myself. Drums help me a lot to relax and relieve stress: you hit the cymbals with all your might and you can go to work or study philosophy. I didn't find a suitable service to compose quality parts automatically, so I decided to develop such an app myself. I have everything openly available on [GitHub], wh ere anyone can test and comment on the application.

What kind of feedback did you get?

I was told that the project has great potential to be realized. At the drum school, the teachers were delighted at the possibility of such a huge simplification of their work. Indeed, they will be able to spend more time at the drum kit with their students than at a music stand or computer. My project was liked by everyone on the diploma defense, and an external independent expert invited me to speak at the Data Fest conference. I left all the contacts. I need feedback and suggestions for improvement because now I need to focus on improving the project, even building a community around it.

What opportunities did you take advantage of at SAS and what opportunities do you think you missed?

I missed a lot of opportunities simply because I was overworked or didn't see it as something I needed, but I tried not to miss the opportunity to just talk to professors, because it is a very important and rewarding experience for a student. Every conversation was fascinating because our professors have a wide and varied experience, and you can if not learn fr om it, at least get in touch with it. I have also been a tutor in the SAS Academic Writing Center. I really enjoy working with words and text, building unusual grammatical structures, and structuring work with the priority of interesting narrative in an academic context. At first, tutors were in charge of checking work: students sent their texts in English to check for grammar, structure, and logic, but then tutors became closer to the learning process. Now they can interact with students, shape their work and control the essay writing process. I think working with students is a very rewarding experience for both sides: tutors recognize frequent mistakes, learn to spot flaws, and can suggest how to correct them; students, on the other hand, get important comments and grow as academics (I hope). Both sides broaden their horizons and develop as individuals.

How do your parents feel about wh ere you study and what you do?

My parents know that I study at university, and that's it. SAS is another world for them: English, some complicated subjects, I come home late and sit down to type some texts. But they see that I work, I treat it with care, I do my best. Probably, this is the most important thing for them. My parents are very different people, and in me there was a combination of their interests. My dad is more technically oriented but not really interested in humanities, my mom, on the contrary, was oriented to humanitarian ecology. My whole family is full of ecologists, geologists, and oil professors, but no one had any expectations that I would continue the lineage; on the contrary, they said, “Don't go into geology: it's an extremely dying field. Go wh ere you feel more comfortable.” So I went.

What is SAS to you?

I would compare SAS to the spine. This is wh ere the very necessary skills in our world are actually built into you, and you use them every day on a subconscious level. Just like the spine: even if I can't feel every vertebra momentarily, I know that I have one and that it fulfills its function. The SAS training format is not suitable for everyone. It is very intense, fast-paced: you need to be able to manage your stress. If you are not very confident in English and you do not plan to improve it sharply to at least B2 level in two months, then SAS is not suitable for you. Ninety percent of the time, we communicate in English. Yes, in informal communication we can speak Russian, because we live in Russia, but when there is at least one English-speaking person around, a professor or an exchange student, the whole room instantly transforms, everyone starts speaking in English, and this is not a problem for us at all.

What are your plans for the future?

If I don't move for a long time, I start to feel very strange, so in the summer — to work and in parallel to look for further development of my academic trajectory. I really liked the topic of machine learning after working on my diploma, so I plan to enroll in a master's program and further develop my profile.

What advice can you give to SAS applicants and students?

I can say that one hundred percent you should learn time management, plan your day. I myself was the kind of student who constantly put everything off to the last minute, but on a certain day you will have too many deadlines to get everything done at once in one night. This requires you to take a step back to plan everything in advance. I did it this way: I drew out a small calendar, ticked off the due dates for tasks, and placed it on my fridge. In this way, I visualized my time so that it was easier to “represent” it and then manage it properly. Basic time management is very useful both at the very beginning of your SAS training and in your future career.