how did I get here?

posted 2023.02.13

I have music in my ears, and the mum of my (very-soon-to-be) daughter is asleep across the wall behind my back. I am wrapping up some calculations for tomorrow's meeting, and I am thinking, how did I get here? Preparing propagators transformations for quantum computation in the vest of postdoctoral research fellow? It has been quite a journey, but it taught me something.

Cutting it short on the pre-high-school part, I was born in Italy. My dad left my mum and me pretty soon thereafter. Luckily, a great other man decided to sub for the role. I despised going to school, very much so. I wanted to live my life, no books, only cigarettes, late nights, and friends. Needless to say that it did not go well, and my grades were not impressive. While I was not the perfect student, I managed to get that final certificate, I was free.

My second phase of life had begun. I started working in a retail chain company, in a big shopping center. I had my honest job, I was providing for myself and my growing hobbies. After a few years of stability and growth in the company, puff...the company permanently closed. It was the right moment to move to another city, where my passion and some friends were. I found another occupation, this time reinventing myself as a carpenter. These are among the most professionally satisfying years I had. I learned something new every day and unleashed my ideas into what it was (and still is) a very quickly expanding company.

In this environment of new ideas, happiness, and renovation, I needed to push further. I had to seek some sort of personal revenge and prove to myself that I could indeed be a diligent student. It was time for me to start University and, given my success in school, I kept it easy doing Physics. I started a Bachelor's at the University of Siena as a part-time student. After unforeseeable results, I committed full-time. From there, I finished in Siena, got a Master's with a scholarship in Cambridge, and followed with a Ph.D. in Exeter (damn, I gotta write that thesis..). I felt unstoppable.

Now, I am back in my little study, still thinking. In hindsight, I loved the struggle that brought me here. I believe it is minor evidence that what keeps us from being "the unimaginable" is us.

My life has finally settled. Today, I am surrounded by people I love and I am ready for whatever this life is going to throw at me. For now, more than anything, I am impatience to meet you, to start the next phase of our life.

trust and science.

posted 2020.01.18

- Some months ago, I wrote these 2 lines after a call with my grandma. -

Today, I have experienced something that hit me. My grandmother, suffering from Alzheimer disease like her mother before her, did not recognise my voice over the phone. Being a stranger for those moments has been weird. This led me to think.

We need to trust more the scientific community, we need to be more connected to that world so far away in which people mostly study, discuss at international meetings and write on Mathematica, Python and Latex. Experiments and calculations are means through which the society has evolved and thanks to which the technology we have today has originated. My grandmother did not want to start the therapy suggested due to her rejection of the diagnosis. She did not believe having a problem but that is an issue which belongs to another discipline. However, my grandfather did not make things easier, reasoning that the medicines would have not done what supposed to do, "no way". Well, the entire reaction to the problem and to its proposed solution is unreasonable. We should be honest and humble to let other people do their jobs. This sentiment of uselessness regarding scientific studies and people that passed their lives trying to come out with the smallest step aiming to some advancements has to stop. These people deserve to be trusted just like your electrician or plumber that you are very likely to let do their jobs without interfering or pretending to know what you do not know.

Science is serious, science is difficult and it is worth to be trusted. People doing research believe in something, struggle to arrive at the end of a long journey of education and finally, when they can give their contribution and apply what they know for a better purpose, they are not trusted. My grandmother could have started her therapy earlier reducing the effects of the advancing illness if only science and who works in it had been trusted.

Hoping in my life to be trusted.