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Education



 

Most of my life I was priviledged enough to receive a high quality education, in which I was awarded several diplomas/certificates.

Kindergarden
During kindergarden I was the first out of all the 400 people in my kindergarden throughout the four years I spent there. I had to spend four due to the fact that I became 7 years old a week later than the beginning of the school year. And since the authorities regarded me as being 6 in September the 15th, the official opening of the school year, I had to wait one more year to start school. Many people my age have experienced similar situations during the communist regime.

Elementary School
I spent 8 years in elementary school, graduating the Elementary School No. 17 of Targu-Mures, which was the second best in my city (out of dozens of schools). During Elementary School the communist regime that has ruled Romania for half a century (1946-1989) ended, but I was educated in a very disciplinary manner by my basic teacher who was a bit whacko. So I was used of being a part of a very disciplined team, in uniform, etc. That is in stark contrast to what kids today get, which is an American-style education, comprising of leisure activities, useless discussions, no homework and lack of discipline.
While in Elementary School, I was awarded several prizes and special awards for my school results, at the end of each year. I have to admit though, that my various hobbies sometime got in the way of school activities ;)
Also while still in Elem School, I was one of the very few students to participate in mathematical olympics, as well as mathematical special competitions, the latter being much more exclusive than the first.
Unfortunately it didn't seem a big deal to me at the time, so I've lost track of most of the diplomas I have received during that period.
As a consequence, I can not say for sure how many awards, diplomas and nominations I have won, since I was only able to find in my archives about 4 special awards and a calendar which I have received after the 1994 special mathematics competition.
Besides participating in those events, I could perhaps note the fact that in one particular year, I was the first student in the entire school (of thousands) to get the maximum grade of 10.00 at a maths competition. That is even more of an achievement when considering the other students took private classes for months in order to prepare for the competition, while I always stayed out of the house and played, which resulted in me getting scolded by my parents.
In the last years of Elementary School, my main teacher developed a little bit of adversity towards me, as well as some other classmates of mine. In my case, she hated my family, because my mom is a graduate of a prestigious university, while she (my main teacher) was a graduate of a 3-year teaching institute. This used to be an on-going rivalry between Romanian teachers, with Institute graduates (poorly prepared) always expressing their jealousy on the University graduate teachers (highly educated).
During the 8th grade, she tried her best to expell me by giving me the lowest possible grades, so I would not be able to enter high school that year. She was not the first and certainly not the last teacher that unsuccessfully tried to get rid of me :).
Having tried her best, she managed to pull down my averages to the lowest level until then, but I still managed to graduate Elem. After I did that, I scored an amazingly 8.35 grade at the High School admission exam.

High School
High Schools in Romania are a mixture of things: on one hand, they have a "profile", a "speciality", just like an American university.
I have managed to be the 12th out of over 400 applicants of the most elite high school in my town, and thus I've entered the top-ranking Computer Science class.
Most of my classmates, especially the ones so highly regarded by (at that time already former) main teacher, have obtained low averages and joined crap classes. Considering the little time I've spent preparing for those exams, the huge ammount of time other people spent for that, plus their expensive personal trainers, I think I did good ;).
The only one of our 31 member class who failed the admission exams was my last deskmate. She also happened to be the only one who was highly confident in herself and who had already planned her life, grades, averages and events up to the age of 40. Yeah, well, it figures, right ? That should teach something about being arogant to those who still are :).
At the same time of having a "profile" for each class, the Romanian high-school system has about 6 more university-level courses which you need to attend, so when you finish a Romanian high-school, you received enough education to equal a few foreign universities.
Sounds tough ? it is ! Add a few nasty teachers, a lot of cool classmates and friends, television, the Internet, plus a few hobbies, and all of a sudden you realize you don't care about studying anymore. That is why, during high school, we stopped learning altogether. The four years came and passed having nothing to do with school. Out of a class of 25, I can't really say that more than 5 people gave a damn about school.
But surprize came again, when at the high school graduation exam, a very difficult one in the Romanian school system, I repeated the earlier crazyness, and I haven't studied anything. And AGAIN, the others spent tremendously during long years for douzens of private teachers, taking supplimentary classes at just about everything. But somehow I managed to graduate with 8.12, while they scored averages like 7.83 and such.

University
Having graduated High School, I felt I've had enough of schooling for a thousand lives. I have decided since 1999 that I wanted to become a fighter pilot. My flying experience in the Airclub had opened my mind to new horizons. However, fate decided instead of me: there was no admittance for fighter pilots in the year 2000. And since pilots are arrogant people, I wouldn't want to become a mechanic and fix the planes flown by others, so at the time I felt pretty much like my future has gone down the drain.
But with my mom's pressure on me, I subscribed to the Petru Maior University in my city, in the Computer Engineering Section. And since that section has about 7 specialities, I chose the only one exclusive for computers. That's how it's called too, "Computers". Our year (2000) being the first when such a class has been introduced.
College was totally different that high school. Actually, for me they were kinda opposite. I had only one friend during college, and amazing as it seems, after 5 years of being classmates, some of us still didn't know our collegues' full names.
I had many interesting courses, including around 12 programming languages and many hardware related stuff, however all of them lasted no more than a single semester, and thus, we remain with no strong knowledge about any of them.
I graduated Petru Maior University, Faculty of Engineering, section of Electrical Engineering with the speciality of Computers in june 2005.

Diplomas
So in the end, I have several diplomas, including:
- several excellency diplomas in elementary school ;
- high school diploma ;
- assistant programmer analyst degree ;
- computer engineering diploma ;
- english language certificate (European cerrtification system "level C2 - advanced plus") ;

Please note that the 5-year long, diploma engineer course I have graduated is a Master's degree equivalent in the new Romanian system, in the international system, as well as in the US educational system.

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