Personal Bio

At around lunchtime on May 13, 1980 a small town of Albertin in the middle of Belarussian flatland saw a brand new Russian Jew emerge into a lighted hospital room. This very ordinary occurrence opens the first chapter of my story. My recollection of the next six years of my life has now become a haze blended with all sorts of wonderful dreams I can no longer separate from reality, so an honest thing to do would be to skip over this period. Maybe a bit more even, let's say, to fourth grade. That year (it was 1990) I left my home in warm swampy Minsk to discover a new temporary life in the southern outskirts of Siberia in a small town called Beryozoviy (translated as Birchtown), which we reached after a ten day ride on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. This train ride was one of the best experiences of my theretofore relatively uneventful life...

A year later we returned. By that time, I was in fifth grade and had changed schools so many times that people guessed that my dad was in the military. They guessed wrong: he was a free-spirited Civil Engineer. For several more years my life progressed with some minor adventures, until my family after some deliberation decided that Motherland was not a good mother to us, and we should therefore be adopted by another far far away called America where vodka grows on trees and all men are created equal. To be fair, most people were equal in the former Soviet Union as well, but this equality was mostly in misery and also excluded all kinds of distinguished and often indistinguishable minorities like the Jews. And so, on January 14, 1994 we boarded a plane in the Minsk airport that would take us to the land of the free, and up we went above the snow and the lights and then down into more snow and more lights in O'Hare Int'l Airport, Chicago, some thirteen hours later.

A few months after arriving in Chicago, I finished Tolstoy's War and Peace, and a few months after that I graduated from a pre-High School. When I began High School, I could not in my wildest imaginations have predicted the path I would choose years later, when I would step through the doors of the Northwestern School of Engineering building as a Computer Engineering major. Back then, driven by fate, school requirements, and ambition, I found myself taking my first programming class. At this time I still aspired to become a medic, and my choices of classwork were primarily results of pragmatism and ignorance of the life-critical skill of weaseling out of requirements. Unfortunately, this skill evades me even now.

My High School years flew by. Somewhere along the way I decided that a stellar career as a doctor was not for me, and instead I would do better in the role a typical Russian Jewish immigrant plays: that of a Computer Programmer. But as I was never fond of cliches, I figured that being called an "Engineer" would help my reputation, and I'd get a nice Liberal Arts education along the way. Hence my Computer Engineering major. An Economics minor came out almost spontaneously, as I've been taking Economics classes all along during my undergraduate career at Northwestern, and in the end it was just a matter of declaring it. Interestingly, somehow I always enjoyed Economics without being driven towards Investment Banking. Maybe it has something to do with having no desire to work endless hours during the best years of my life without being compensated very much (relatively speaking) for it. So the minor was sufficient, and a major, officially at least, was of little added value.

When the summer of my Junior year of college rolled along, I departed for an internship at Visteon, a Detroit-based car parts manufacturer that was spun-off by Ford a few years earlier. I had two goals in mind for that summer. The first was to get a full-time job offer from Visteon in the coming September. The second was to gain the type of experience I would need to get a full-time job offer elsewhere. Graduate school figured nowhere in my thoughts at this time. And then, suddenly, something clicked. A part of it may have been the Economy going berzerk. Or maybe it was the fact that I had done quite well academically and have grown more fond of it than what lay beneath the cover of the industry. Whatever the reason, the seed was planted that summer, and by the time I completed my final application to Graduate School in December of 2001, I was confident that I would invest time in at least a Masters. Today, I am reasonably certain that I will stay for a Ph.D.

...I once asked a few of my Graduate student friends at Northwestern why they decided to go back to school for a Ph.D. Their initial blabber could not conceal the simple truth: they did not know. They eventually conceded this truth, and yet I persisted, feeling that there must be a reason for such a drastic step. One of them revealed suddently that his father was a professor. So it was almost expected for him. And the others? There was some strong force driving them as well, not as apparent, but no less powerful. Education for the sake of education. It may very well be culture, for I can think of no other tenable explanation for this phenomenon. Or it may be some sort of a gut feeling, like the one that drove a village boy named Lomonosov to become an appraised Russian scholar (not as well known outside of Russia, unfortunately). As a Graduate student at the University of Michigan, I pondered this question: why did I go on? The pecuniary prospects certainly played little role, since one would likely do far better in that respect with an MBA. And so the question remains, and the only answer I can give is wholly inadequate: it feels right. Well, I guess I'll just go with that and see where it takes me.

My Hobbies

Russian Poetry

Ever since I memorized Borodino by Lermontov when I was about five, I have been very much fond of Russian poetry. When I was eight or nine I tried to write myself, but after having been subjected to some discouragement in the form of mockery from my parents, I stopped (to be honest, my early attempts were pretty laughable). Instead, I concentrated on other subjects like Algebra and Physics, which have come in very useful many years later. My love of Russian poetry, of course, did not diminish one bit, and I have become accustomed to reading and occasionally memorizing poems of Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Vysotsky, and others.

As a freshman at Northwestern University, I took a 19th Century Russian Poetry course with Ilya Kutik. Out of this came my newfound appreciation for, surprisingly enough, 20th Century Russian Poetry, in part maybe due to a better overall understanding of the genre. At about the same time, I renewed my interest in writing. Someday, I will post some of my favorite works by Russian poets, as well as several of my own poems, on this website. Right now, it is just too difficult for me to type in Russian.

English Poetry

To be honest, it took me until I was a senior in college to develop appreciation for poetry in English. I had until that time despised free verse, considering it a tool of those who can't sport a rhyme. It took a course in Reading and Writing Poetry (in English) to change my mind. And it really was a 180. Since that time, I have much less tolerance for "traditional" highly rhymed-metered poetic styles, prefering the more "interesting" experiments in language and meter.

As a part of the Reading/Writing Poetry class, I naturally had to write (and read...) some poetry. As a consequence of the class, I have written some that was not a part of any assignment, and may therefore be technically less polished, but maybe a little more interesting. My favorite English poetry pieces, as well as some poems of my own are presented below, and more will be added with time.

Boris Yeltsin Converts to Judaism (Yevgeniy Vorobeychik)

He strolled into the synaguge with a proud,
drunk, crumpled face to hear the coarse, loud
half-Yiddish cheers. A crowd of dancing rabbis
gathered around him, like communist rebels
around a czar, filling Boris with joy
that soon he will no longer be a goy.
But, as he reached a height of most pure bliss,
he heard the words ring out: "We must do bris."
"The foreskin's got to go!" a rabbi yelled
in passion. Boris moved his hand to shield
his pressious organ as the crowd moved fast
to seize him. He was helpless, but the worst
was yet to come. The doors flew open, and
a mohel entered, knife in his right hand.
As Boris sized the knife, he heard men say,
"We'll cut him in a presidential way!"

The poor man woke up screaming. Chilling sweat
was dripping from his forehead. He yelled, "Nyet!",
picked up a glass of vodka, took a sip,
fell into a stupor, and went back to sleep...
*****************************************

Winter Through the Window (Yevgeniy Vorobeychik)

The world shrinks in the window
with the bare trees standing
somber and incomplete.
The winter's come
Again.
It's been forgotten
in the restful times of summer,
when days were longer,
brighter,
and pulsed in lively harmony.
The rhythm has been taken
from the land by a lonely
season that came dressed in white
with dark short days
and long controlling nights.
Forgetfulness
set in. With lazy, sleepy
fingers it caresses
the naked eyes and gently
plays with them, while they are
still inside and warm.
The heater beats the hardened pulse
of winter,
as the cold incessant wind
beats a more bitter pulse
out there, on the other side
of the glass.
These are the days when home
is truly sweet and tender,
always filled with an expected warmth,
while foreign world has
only cold in store.
Away from home the body,
unadjusted
to the biting tongue of
the sarcastic frost that feels
too comfortable out there
in the streets,
strives to be back, to
escape
the punishing wind and cold
and trees that lean on air
asking for a coat with outspread
bony branch-hands;
the shivering body begs
the earthly
comfort of the bed: it wants
to hide under the heavy blankets
and hibernate until the days grow long.
*****************************************

Schizophrenia (Yevgeniy Vorobeychik)

Unspoken words,
ignoble doubts:
from here on
division
sprouts.
The little
fibs and
blatant lies:
now
everything
is a surprise.
Deceitful thoughts,
forgotten
dreams--
and
nothing
is quite
what it seems.
The shadows
walk
among the
friends,
unjust suspicion
never ends.
The tears roll
upon
the cheeks.
The injured tongue
no longer speaks.
A frown
sets upon the face
that cannot hide
its own
disgrace.
*****************************************

Sonnet (Yevgeniy Vorobeychik)

Should I tell you today that I love you?
Throw these words
like a hammer
upon your head?
It may be a lie - but it sounds
nice,
and lies that sound nice are
not lies.
But even if it weren't a lie --
then what?
You've heard it a million times,
and so for you
it
has become
cliché.
You'll smile your pretty smile
and say
"It's nice
of you
to say!"
And I would yell in
my head,
"No!!! it's not
nice!.."
You're just like any other;
I know it. And I - to you.
In our typical exchange
of cliché phrases
that are so nice,
we forget what they
mean,
this niceness penetrates us deep,
covers us up all over
with yellow cotton-candy,
sugary and hollow.
The nice is so very sweet --
"You are sweet," she tells me --
like cotton-candy.
I tell her, "You are beautiful" --
like a cactus flower.
And it no longer matters
which comes first.
*****************************************
...more to come in the future...

Music

I was raised on Classical Music and Russian "bards". The latter term probably needs explanation. It is a genre in Russian songwriting, which emphasizes primarily poetry with generally simple guitar accompaniment. The songs are both written and performed by the artist. As a consequence of the great emphasis on poetry in this genre, one occasionally finds artists who mostly lack musical talent but are great poets (Vysotsky would be a good example, though his skill as an actor does add a lot of flavor to his performances). Later, I found myself enjoying Blues and certain forms of Jazz. Later yet, Beatles came into the picture. A few years ago, I've developed a taste for rock music and have since immersed myself into it head first. What results from all this is an unusual blend of musical interests.

In classical music, my favorite period is Romantic. This includes such names as Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Schumann, and Rakhmaninov (he is kind of a late Romantic). I think modern classical music is an acquired taste, and I have not yet acquired it completely, though I have long liked Prokofiev and Khachaturyan.

My Blues and Jazz tastes are mostly ignorant, and Buddy Guy is one of only a few names I can pull out of my "favorites" bag.

My rock music tastes are mostly tuned for British rock, with famous bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and Muse (note the conspicuous absence of U2) being the favorites. As for American rock, Metallica, Soundgarden, and Nirvana are tied for my MVP award.

Piano

With my great affinity for music, it is only natural that I should play an instrument. This is in addition greatly helped by the fact that my mother is a professional pianist, and so I was given up to the study of piano at the age of six. I studied until I was thirteen, at which point the imminent immigration ended my music school endeavors. While this seems like a long period, my lessons were not continuous, and as a result I only finished with about 6+ solid years of piano. Not very impressive. If one adds to this nine years of rust, I can pretty much assert that I am no good as a piano player as of today, though given enough motivation, I could probably return to my prior form within a half a year. Maybe. After all, it's like learning how to ride a bycicle, right? Well, maybe the analogy is not quite valid...

Guitar

Since guitar is much easier to carry around than a piano, this became my instrument of choice lately. I am still quite pitifully bad, but am getting better slowly but surely.

Family