The road to PhD
Life started in Kozani, Greece in 1988 where I stayed until I finished high school. As a teenager I had one big passion, mathematics. During high school, I was always eager to go beyond the topics covered in maths textbook. I participated in mathematical competitions and succeeded at province level (2004, 2005) as well as national level (2003).
I moved to Thessaloniki and studied Mathematics in Aristotle University. During my military service (compulsory in Greece), I realized I prefered applying mathematics and decided to proceed my academic journey in that direction. In 2011, I went to Samos with an ambitious plan. I simultaneously enrolled in two programs at the University of the Aegean; a graduate program in "Mathematical Modeling in Physical Sciences and New Technologies" and an undergraduate program in "Statistics and Actuarial-Financial Mathematics". Despite the intensity of the parallel studies, I completed both and I reached my second revelation: I was even more interested in analyzing human behavior. I felt grateful for the tools I was exposed during my mathematical studies, but my path was about to change.
The last piece of the puzzle was deciding the field to specialize in. Studying human behavior is exciting and spans multiple fields like economics, psychology and sociology. Motivated by my curiosity, I completed various MOOCs on Coursera in topics I was interested waiting to find my true passion. Thanks to a course on "Irrational Behavior" taught by Dan Ariely, I found my calling: Behavioral Economics was the field as it combined elements from all the areas I was interested in. I completed a second M.Sc. in "Statistics and Data Analysis" in Samos to sharpen my knowledge and I was ready! [1].
Unfortunately I could not find a suitable program in Greece, but luckily I could find one abroad. Getting accepted for the graduate program in Tinbergen Institute was on the happiest moments in my academic life. I moved in Amsterdam in 2015 and continued my studies there. The graduate program offers a variety of courses for two years, after which students proceed to a PhD.
On top of the (now removed) "I amsterdam" sign in front of Rijksmuseum, 01:30, 10 July, 2017
I finished my PhD in May of 2024 after a long (honestly very long) journey. During the typical congratulations/roasting after the PhD defense, my supedrvisors provided seven conjectures of why it took me so long.
- Long educational warming-up (guilty as charged; took some parallel steps before PhD)
- Lacked practical skills in analysing data (guilty as charged; started with mostly theoretical background)
- Covid just before running my last experiment (took quite some resilience to push through that)
- Supervisors made sure I followed preregistration to the letter (what a useful lesson to learn)
- Multiple other projects not part of the PhD (guilty as charged; learned to be a team player)
- Changed countries once and institutions twice (and underestimated the adjustment process)
- Got married (charge disputed; would not have finished without her)
Obtaining my PhD, Aula Old Lutheran Church, University of Amsterdam, 15:30, 17 May, 2024
Footnotes
- The benefit of having free education in Greece cannot be overstated here. Even with working part-time and parental support, I would not have been to afford my studies if it wasn't for the complete absence of tuition fees.