A Teacher, a Helper, a Fighter
STORY By maddi langweil
The six story New York City apartment building on the corner of 68th street and 19th avenue was Andrew Kosenko’s second home, but his first home in America after leaving Ukraine at the age of 13. It was the day after the 4th of July when Kosenko’s father won the Green Card Lottery to move to America in 1999.
“The day after July 4th is an anniversary for me,” he said. “I always remember it every day.”
The only child spent the remainder of his childhood in the Bensonhurst neighborhood amongst other immigrant families. Kosenko would smell the freshly baked Italian goods around the corner not far from where he would play with the other children in the area. While moving was not his choice because of the friends he left behind and the teachers he separated from, it ended up being the right time.
“At the time, it was right. If I had stayed there for a couple of more years, I would have been much more Ukrainian [and] if I left a few years earlier I would have been much more American,” he said. “I left at 13 which is right when a person is really developing into who they are.”
Fortunate to have learned English in school before leaving his home country, Kosenko took on more adult responsibilities than other kids his age are commonly exposed to. This included speaking with immigration officials, paying the bills and filling out tax forms for his parents. In a new world, the young 13-year-old was navigating a different country and his new sense of identity, which often left him with feelings of unhappiness.
“I was sort of helicopter dropped into a new place. It was difficult because it was difficult in my own head. But it wasn't like I had bad experiences here. I, in fact, had great experiences here for the most part,” he said. “I really missed my friends for many years. And I think it's fair to say that I was unhappy here.”
Kosenko and his parents didn’t know what it took or looked like to live in America. Another Ukrainian family that immigrated earlier was a friend of his father’s and helped the family get adjusted to the new environment.
The English that Kosenko learned in Ukraine was a vital tool for navigating his new world, which came from the lessons of his English teacher, Valentina Girnyak.
“My English teacher was absolutely phenomenal. I had sort of four or five teachers in my life who changed the course of my life, and she was one of them. Up until the war started my class and a number of others would go to her house decades after we had graduated and bring her flowers and have dinner with her,” Kosenko said. “We really, really loved her.”
Mrs. Girnyak later became a friend that Kosenko still keeps in touch with today, including his other classmates and friends back in Ukraine. Once every few months, Kosenko and his former teacher write to each other to keep in touch.
While the adjustment felt difficult at the time of the move, Kosenko and his family knew that this was the new place meant for them. Kosenko’s father grew up in the Soviet Union, a socialist and communist state that officially fell in 1991. When attending school, Kosenko’s father was kicked out for carrying a Beatles record in his backpack. During this time, the Beatles’ albums were considered a threat, so they were never invited to perform in Soviet Russia.
Music was heavily embedded into his family. It was this love for music that became this professor’s outlet to dream.
“I wanted to be a writer or musician,” he said. “And I sat there, you know, the seven- or eight-year-old me and decided, well, probably not. So, I had a very mercantile outlook.”
Now an Assistant Professor of Economics at Marist College, Kosenko believed in his dreams but knew they would constantly change as he grew older. Being a writer was the closest he had to an aspiration, but quickly connected to economics when he attended New York University and later received his PhD at Columbia in this field.
What really caught his attention in teaching was his time as a teacher’s assistant. It was at this moment when he first understood how to help another student and “make their mind click.”
“This is what teaching is about. Helping them make a change in their brains,” he said. He loves to see a student walk out of his classroom with a “slightly different brain.”
Even before becoming fascinated in game theory of strategic interaction, Kosenko had a small job as a cashier at a local pharmacy while in school. In this job he learned how to be patient and treat people with kindness.
“I may have been the only person they would interact with that day, they want to talk to you,” he said. “We take for granted that someone will be nice and greet you, but that takes a toll on those service workers. And we should recognize that. We should be kinder. Being nice is free.”
Illustration by Madison Lisowski
With a desire to be kind to others and treat them with care, Kosenko is using his energy and heart to care for the refugees fleeing from the Russian war in Ukraine. While he wishes he could house Ukrainians in his home and provide them with the security of shelter and food, due to Biden’s border regulations, he is working with a board of other people to provide aid for these people from afar.
“We connect refugees with a safe place, typically in Poland, but also in Romania and in Slovakia. So that was really in the first couple of weeks,” he said. “I have, along with a friend of mine, just bought a bunch of medical supplies, tourniquets and sort of fancy blood clotting gauzes and sent them to a couple of locations in Ukraine.”
These medical supplies, Kosenko hopes, will arrive in the hands of an old school friend of his who is now a trauma surgeon.
“And once it gets there it will establish sort of more of what they need. These particular gauzes can be used in the hospital [and] they can also be used by sort of army or territory defense units,” he said. “And that's the second effort.”
Besides sending supplies and organizing where the thousands of refugees will be housed and fed, Kosenko is part of a group of Ukrainian American economists who are helping students network and find them student positions that could give them the opportunity to even co-author a paper.
When the professor heard Ukraine was under attack, he was not completely surprised.
“I didn't know exactly when or how, but you know, 200,000 troops on the border was a big hint. And I was monitoring the news very closely and because I was so glued to the news all the time, I happened to watch or catch Putin's address, in which he announced the war,” he said.
It was five o'clock in the morning when Kosenko’s niece, who lives 25 miles from the Ukrainian-Russian border, called Kosenko’s uncle that there were sounds of explosions.
“And then once the war started, I think everybody switched into emergency mode and went, ‘How can I help?’ and ‘What can I do?’ Everybody I know was doing something. I was texting with refugees, somebody else was collecting money, somebody else was going to Ukraine,” Kosenko said. “I started DM-ing other economists on Twitter and saying ‘look I see you there you know what's going on? How can I help?’“
“The nation and really the world is united against this madman,” he said.
Throughout Kosenko’s whole life he felt that he always had to adapt to the environment he was in and lose himself. But it wasn’t until later that he wished he could tell his younger self that adaptability is a good thing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to lose yourself.
“I don’t like that I always try to change who I am for the circumstances,” he said. “It's a part of my character I have to work on.”
These feelings are what control why Kosenko may need to step away from an environment and be alone because he doesn’t want to not be himself for too long. By taking time for himself, he can feel more grounded and separate from ideas of what he thinks versus what he is supposed to think.
“Be yourself. Trust in yourself. Maintain yourself,” Kosenko commonly reminds himself. “In my case that's what I found has been missing.”
Photography by Alejandro Basalo