So, let me tell you a little bit about me. I was born at a young age over a view over the South coast of England; I believe it was the 16th floor of the hospital at around 6 in the morning whilst the sun was still rising. I’m almost positive that if it were not for all the drugs and agonising pain that my mother would have appreciated the beauty.
However, I remember little of that place as at the age of 2 my family moved to a small town further West between Southampton and Portsmouth where I’d consider myself to have a rather ordinary and modest upbringing. However, 8 years later on my 10th birthday nonetheless, the family up and moved again. This time to West Norfolk. I remember not being terribly happy with the move and many a night wide awake, unable to sleep with concern.
But I came to love the place. And after several years in the education system in the local vicinity I was due to leave the place with an assortment of GCSE’s and A levels with a definite focus upon the natural world sciences and information/communications systems (or computers to most people). After a few decisions that were not really founded on logic I found myself in the October of 2005 at the University of Nottingham studying Biochemistry and Biological Chemistry.
I wish that I could say that I had an easy time at Nottingham, but that was far from the truth. Through a combination of factors, like some crazy relationships, a ridiculously demanding course, a difficult social life and developing inability to tolerate idiots or lad-ish behaviour it took a long time to acclimatise to any vague sense of normality. However, at some point something must have changed because at the end of 4 years and a Masters certificate, I was rather fond of the place and was sad to be leaving.
Alas I was moving on to bigger and better things. Still interested in the sciences and scientific research the choice of a PhD came easily and after much searching and jaunting up and down the country I decided upon the University of East Anglia in Norwich. And this is where you join me now. As a PhD student in the MacMillan group trying to work out how proteins bind to each other and ultimately how bacteria can kill each other without killing themselves. Which would make the ultimate aim to be assisting in the discovery of new, novel antibiotics.