The first higher education of the new master has nothing in common with mechanics or electronics, and certainly with mechatronics. As a student, Oles studied business economics and finance. In the department of routine repairs and major overhauls, he was engaged in developing schedules, making plan/actual comparison of repairs, calculating deviations, writing comments and analysing the causes of nonconformances. However, he extremely lacked a technical education for his career development at the mining company.

"As soon as Metinvest Polytechnic announced the admission to the master's programme, I immediately decided to enrol. I found computer design of mechatronic systems to be the most interesting area. This is how you can automate the production process. It is possible to control an excavator remotely or carry out geological exploration in a quarry using a drone thanks to this science. That is, to make mechanical engineering more computerised and modern," – the Master says enthusiastically.

Since the department where Oles Samokhin works is very responsible for the duties and deadlines, the man has become an almost exemplary student. Throughout his studies, he spent his evenings studying online and absorbing new knowledge. Since all his classmates were also pursuing their second higher education and had some work experience at enterprises, everyone was motivated and interested in the classes. This inspired the teachers.

"Almost half of our group were from Northern GOK. There were also students from Central, Southern GOKs and Kamet-Steel. The students are quite serious. The teachers were interested in us because we argued constructively and told them how we solve certain problems at our enterprises. It happened that a teacher would tell us about some equipment, but we had different, more modern equipment. Then, for the next class, they prepared an updated information for us. I can say that our teachers were very dedicated and tried to give us even more material than was required by the programme," says Oles SAMOKHIN.

No matter how useful the theory was, the future master liked practical classes the most. He was interested in studying the various modules that he and his classmates connected to the Ardulino board. He also enjoyed writing code for the equipment to move or stop according to a given algorithm. It was one thing to have a teacher demonstrate it, and another to do it yourself and succeed. In his graduation thesis, Oles worked on improving the ECG-10 excavation. He admits that he wasn't nervous about the defence itself because he felt supported by his colleagues and relied on his experience.

"Since I have repeatedly participated in online meetings in Teams, I set myself up to think of it as a simple workflow and answeredg questions. The examination committee was positive. In order not to drag it out, I was the second to defend and did it successfully. Now I have a master's degree from Metinvest Polytechnic, the first non-state technical university in Ukraine," the specialist proudly concludes.