The alumni who agreed to share their experience this time were Director of Yashel Productions Studio Denis Matveev, SMM Manager Zoya Antonova, chemist and popular science author Arkady Kuramshin, and founders of ILAR Technology Ildar Nizameev and Stanislav Fedorenkov.

The speakers tried to answer the question of how to find your calling in life. They reflected on their success stories, mistakes and failures, and things that have changed their lives.

Denis Matveev, originally an IT student, decided to shoot videos for local comedy contests called KVN and met very favorable feedback. Multiple teams used his works in their performances. He is also active in Instagram projects.

Zoya Antonova majored in political science but turned to wedding photography soon after graduation. She is now an employee of a quest project called “Exit the Room”. She also has a background in music, museology, archaeology, and architecture. She told students to acquire as much experience as possible – sooner or later it may be of use.

Ildar Nizameev and Stanislav Fedorenkov were of a different opinion. Both entrepreneurs are not IT experts; they are graduates of economics and law respectively. They didn’t try to learn coding but started to look for people who had different skills than them. Success was more a matter of trial and error, according to them. Nizameev was even expelled for a disciplinary infraction during his junior year and worked as an executive assistant at one of the local banks. Extremely long hours and workload convinced him that it’s worth trying to build his own business. He resumed his studies and started working on IT projects.

His partner, Stanislav Fedorenkov, had a different story – he graduated with honors. He is of the opinion that going with the flow can actually be very beneficial in life, but it’s important to try new things in order to find what you like. He once cancelled a new project because of an advice from a more experienced colleague. As a result, a very similar project entered the market two years later and became very successful.

Dr. Kuramshin started his presentation with a little trivia game about chemistry, which was welcomed by the audience. He shared his story, the one which you can get familiar with in this article.

The attending students clearly had much to ponder after the meeting and, hopefully, learnt something useful for their future.