My Story
Basic Background
What's up Steemit! My name is Alexi Papakyriacou and I am a recent graduate from Marquette University with a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
I have a teeming passion for clinical/health sciences and any overarching fields including, but not limited to, genetics, immunology, and biotech. With that being said, my life has reached a crossroads post-graduation whereby I have to choose whether to enter the medical field and pursue a career as a physician or explore a graduate degree such as a PhD in a science in order to equip myself with the necessary tools to explore the realm of research.
I believe that hobbies are the motivators of life - find something you love to do on the side and you will find that stress is alleviated. Obviously being your own boss and not "working for the man" is a fantastic goal, but for now I am taking my education seriously and surrounding myself with enjoyable activities that may prove to be lucrative in the future.
Interests
Now, for the fun parts!
Lifting
A hobby that has now become a lifestyle for me is fitness. I workout approximately four days a week utilizing a full-body regimen every other day while attempting, yes, attempting, to do cardio as well. I will make future posts about the health and muscular benefits of full-body workouts as opposed to a split routine and other fitness-related discussions. Overall, I try to maintain a clean diet (high protein, low sugar, low fat, and no white flour) while adhering closely to my fitness routine.
My childhood best friend, Dominic, and I began our joint social media venture in the fitness industry. We commenced knowing that it was a saturated industry but still tried to press on with it. Using different Instagram tactics to grow our page, we reached around 1,500 followers along with nearly 100 Youtube subscribers, but we soon learned that advertising our growth in such a way was not the route we wanted to take. Below is a sample of our introduction video before we ended the adventure.
Rock Music
Since I could remember, my dad exposed me to classic rock and alternative music. I grew up on bands and artists like Santana, the Eagles, the Cure, and U2 to name a few. This slowly evolved into me independently exploring the rock and alternative genres, attending concerts, and shortly after, picking up the guitar. I've been playing the guitar now for almost seven years now and have created a fairly in-depth understanding of past and current artists of this music scene through learning their music to play as covers for bands or just by mere exposure. To date, my favorite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers with their previous guitarist, John Frusciante as my favorite musician.
I have several ideas for music blogging including possible songs, artists, or albums of the week in order to create dialogue with other members of the Steemit community. I feel this would be beneficial for all parties as we could suggest music to one another and develop an inclusive sub-culture.
Sports
Cubs. Blackhawks. Bears. Bulls. (Apologies to Packers or Cardinals fans).
Sports are a huge part of who I am, whether it's learning to kick a soccer ball from the moment I was able to walk, proudly making the fantasy football championship nearly every year for seven years, or just playing (insert sport) recreationally with friends. Ultimately, I am looking to blog about recent events in athletics, and create open discussions amongst other fanatics and devout fans. On the podcast, discussed below, I have slightly began this motive but I intend to incorporate more in upcoming episodes.
The Podcast - Nash Bros
"Let's make an app." "Let's get into the fitness game." "Let's make a podcast."
My childhood best friend, Dominic, has been the person hard at work with me trying to bring these ideas to fruition.
Dom and I always had ideas stored away whether it was in our individual notes, a Google Doc, or other means. We would scribble down app ideas we thought had the potential to be the next big thing. Looking back, the creative energy was always present and the ideas did have strong foundations (will be discussed in further blogs). It became therapeutic as we were separated by college but remained infinitely close through innovation. As soon as a new idea would come to mind we would alert each other and thoroughly plan out formatting, which audience the app would target, and potential/hopeful buyers of the idea. The ability to bounce ideas off each other and create that happy energy was unparalleled. Once Dom confirmed his impressive major and drive for computer science, we knew these concepts could not go to waste.
As stated earlier, we did make an attempt at the fitness world which we found to be slightly underwhelming and extremely time consuming. Not to say hard work is avoidable when seeking profit, but it was not work that we collaboratively enjoyed. The decision unfortunately began to feel more like a burden in many regards. However, the benefits included getting our feet wet in front of the camera, script writing, and the invaluable lesson of not caring what others think. For instance, I would be filmed at an extremely large fitness facility doing exercises in front of people on steroids or enormous athletes. You quickly learn not to care what people may or may not say about what you are doing, and in fact, most of the paranoia is mental.
Our most recent move is into podcasting. The reason behind this media was to capture our personalities in a way the fitness industry did not allow us to while also being able to completely improvise when necessary and utilize Dom's coding abilities for post-production. We have created a company, Nash Bros, which can be found at nashbros.net (link in my personal bio) as well as on Youtube, iTunes, and SoundCloud. We have created two signature segments, Nash Talks, where we discuss anything from current events, to hilarious personal accounts and The Pregame, where we prepare to go out on a Friday or Saturday night usually while comically attempting to coherently host a productive podcast. Both of which we genuinely enjoy making.
The podcast is our strongest and highest priority venture to date. We are looking to continue with it for as long as possible with great visions in store. Below is the first part of an episode we created with our friend, Chris, where we discuss his business ventures as a successful entrepreneur, how to profit on social media, and the best means of online marketing.
Dominic's Steemit account is 
Thanks everyone for the read! Please comment below any and all constructive thoughts! I absolutely love feedback.
Cheers!