An... introduction

Greekgirlinlondon is my internet name and I would like to advise whoever starts an internet presence to be careful which username they choose. I wish someone had told me so 5 years ago when for some reason, this name - one of the least viable in the long-term - seemed to me appropriate.

Why I am saying this? Because I am having problems because of it. Even though I have and always will - fortunately or unfortunately - remain a Greek person, I do not want to blog about "girly" stuff so much any more and I am not living in London either.

Rant over, time to introduce this blog.

I spent years trying to pretend that science was something that i accidentally fell into. Something that just happened to me. That i could have been an equally mediocre banker, lawyer, painter, architect, psychologist, builder, singer, etc. At the same time I kept thinking that science is something that I am not good enough for, passionate enough for, innovative enough for, smart enough for, etc etc.

And when I say years, I mean a decade. More than one-third of my life and the WHOLE of my adult life.

So for me it took a degree, an MSc, a PhD - admittedly all of them from the top 5 universities in the whole world -, 5 scientific papers (including one in Nature) and 2 years of soul-searching absence for me to say that "My name is Greekgirlinlondon and I am a scientist".

I do not really feel a scientist of course - you do not immediately feel something just because you said it - but I thought that if I say out loud and if I try to pretend to be one, then one day I might feel like one, and all this wasteful soul-searching will - hopefully!!! - be over.

So this blog was created by me for me to say to myself: YOU ARE A SCIENTIST: DEAL WITH IT!

And because I am one of these people who having decided to do something, they want to do it properly and methodically and keep records and make something good and new and innovative out of it, and discuss with other people about it, and learn, and grow etc, I decided to take what I am - a... scientist - and make the best I can out of it.

I do not know where this is road will lead me, but I want to share this journey with you.

I have to apologise from the beginning: this journey is not going to be tidy. When has a scientist's log book has ever been tidy anyway? I will make a lot of mistakes, I will ask a lot of questions that - for me - will lead to dead ends (they might not lead to dead ends for you though), I will go backwards and forwards, etc etc.

My goal at the moment is to find out what is out there in the world of science outside the lab. But who knows if my goal will be the same in a year's time? Maybe by that time I will be back in the lab. Who knows?

This is how all scientific experiments begin - you have some thoughts on what might happen, but you do not know what will.

Lets begin!