I was born and raised in the South East of England and developed an interest in the world around me, and the way it worked, at a young age. I credit this to my parents and my (considerably older) brother, who encouraged and fostered this interest, always taking time to answer my questions or to find out the answers if they didn't know themselves.
In spite of this I hated science classes when I was at primary school, enough that I recall feeling ill on the days we had science and asking not to go to school. I put this down mostly to the teacher - she also taught English and, being dyslexic, this was one of my worst subjects and I often felt foolish, particularly when said teacher pointed out my mistakes in front of the class. I also didn't like maths, which at that level is all about arithmetic - I don't have a good rote memory, so things like my times tables were a constant source of anguish, and I recall the maths teacher (also the head mistress) becoming very frustrated with my complete inability to master something which seemed so simple when I was clearly an intelligent child.
At secondary school, however, science and maths became a little more divorced from English and arithmetic, although initially I still avoided both subjects, once doing no maths homework for over a term which earned me a great deal of detention! Gradually, however, it became obvious that I was actually rather good at mathematical subjects such as algebra and trigonometry, and between this and encouragement from teachers by the time I changed schools at the beginning of the 3rd year (now year 9) I was very much enjoying maths and physics, to the extent that I would do maths and logic puzzles just for fun.
It is not a great surprise that I came to enjoy these subjects, whilst not being very fond of languages and humanities, since it is natural to enjoy doing things that you are good at and to focus on them. I can therefore appreciate why many people do not enjoy mathematical subjects, which have the additional problem that if you don't fully understand the basics you will inevitably become lost and confused very quickly!
My enjoyment and success in maths and physics lead me to take both at A-level, along with chemistry. I went to an all girls' school where there was very little interest in physics, and I was one of only two girls in the class. This, however, worked very much in my favour - the other girl was taking physics because her father expected her to and had no real interest in the subject, so my teacher and I effectively had one-to-one lessons. The lack of other students also meant that I was free to choose which modules I wished to study, which was fortuitous - astro- and particle physics were top of my list, but my teacher had only ever taught modules such as medical physics, since that was what most girls at the school had been interested in. If there had been more girls in my class that year we would undoubtedly have had to continue with the subjects my teacher was familiar with, but that year she was happy for me to research the topics that interested me, and we worked on understanding them together.
I have also always enjoyed drama and wanted to take theatre studies alongside my scientific A-levels, but I was informed by my school that there was a timetable clash - no-one takes physics and theatre studies, so the lessons happened at the same time. Determined not to be thwarted, I found a local college which taught theatre studies as an evening class, and did the A-level there instead.
A-levels complete, I went to the University of Sussex to study Physics with Astrophysics, although for a while I toyed with specializing in Theoretical Physics, and took both the Astrophysics and Theoretical Physics modules in the first term. I greatly enjoyed my four years at Sussex, and was lucky enough to work with Prof. Ed Copeland on a particle cosmology project in my final year. He kindly took me on as a student, due to my enthusiasm I think, despite the fact that he wasn't supposed to be teaching that year. I graduated top of my class, and the project won me a number of prizes.
After Sussex I had planned to travel for a year before returning to the UK to do a PhD. Just before leaving, however, I met a man and fell in love, so I decided to cancel the trip as he couldn't come with me. I'm pleased to say that we've been together ever since, and are now happily married, so it was worth it! Instead, I enrolled on a one year maths course, called Part III, at Cambridge. This was a rather hasty decision, and turned out not to be a good one - the course was based upon the Cambridge maths undergraduate degree, which I had not done, and consequently I was missing the foundation of many of the subjects they covered. This combined with commuting from North London every day and some tricky family circumstances meant that I did not complete the course, and left me feeling very disenchanted with postgraduate study. I became convinced that a PhD would not be the way to go, and spent some time looking around for other things to do. Eventually, however, I realised that physics is where my interest lies, and applied for a PhD after all. This lead to four very happy years at Nottingham, where I also spent a significant amount of time doing science communication work alongside my studies. By the end of my PhD it became clear that in fact I enjoyed science communication more than research, mainly due to the very narrow focus of the work at that level, and so I decided to pursue a career in this area.
I obtained my PhD in 2007 and shortly afterwards moved to the Isle of Man, with my husband. I am now working in science communication both on and off the island, hence the web site you see before you.
