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About me
In brief
- Antti Riikonen, also known as harakka
- Born in 1983
- Currently residing in Turku, Finland
- Computer science student at University of Turku
Autobiography
I was born in 1983 in Ilmajoki, a small municipality in western Finland. I spent my entire youth there and graduated from Ilmajoki Gymnasium with Laudatur in Finnish and English languages, and less notable grades in mathematics and Swedish. I then entered civilian service, working as an assistant caretaker at Etelä-Pohjanmaan Opisto, a large adult education college in Ilmajoki. I enjoyed my job there a lot; a cozy (if small) place to live in, honest physical work, nice people, good work environment, no worrying about money and a chance to learn useful maintenance skills. It was also the first time I had spent any significant time away (though not very far) from home.
When my civilian service ended in the first months of 2005, I seriously had to start considering what to do with my life. I had previously unsuccessfully taken several university entrance exams for folkloristics and religious science and had already become convinced I'd never get into any university so I took the easy way out, and applied into several polytechnics. I was accepted into Laurea Polytechnic, so I moved to Vantaa to start my studies.
Pretty soon I realized I wasn't really interested in learning how to create snappy Powerpoint presentations and program websites in PHP, and decided to bail out from Laurea. With some financial help from my dad I moved to Turku in March 2006 to try my luck with university exams yet again. I had now given serious thought to what I really wanted to study, and passed the entrance exam for computer science at the University of Turku.