Blogging will be slow the next few weeks, as I’m currently in the process of writing up my Master’s thesis, preparing the final presentation and generally finishing up the (last) internship of my MSc programme. After everything is over, I can hopefully call myself a Master of Science. It’s a strange feeling that 5 years of following courses, taking exams, giving presentations and doing experiments will finally culminate into this single degree.
A bioluminescent pyrosome
I also can’t help but think of the way the gentleman scientists of the Romantic and Victorian era obtained their knowledge of the natural world by travelling the seas and carefully observing this planet and the plants and creatures that live on it. Wallace did it. Von Humboldt did it. Darwin did it. And Huxley did it. The following entry in Huxley’s (aged 24) diary is enough to make anyone jealous:
I have just watched the moon set in all her glory, and looked at those lesser moons, the beautiful Pyrosoma, shining like white-hot cylinders in the water
~Thomas Huxley, Diary of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (1849)
With a few clicks, I can find out more about Pyrosoma than Huxley could dream of. I just found out that Pyrosoma lack any kind of nerve system, but instead communicate via the bioluminescence that Huxley admired so much. I can tell you that the Pyrosoma are like glowing colonial flagships, housing thousands of individual zooids. I now know that while they look like jellyfish, they are actually pretty closely related to us vertebrates, being urochordates.
But still, part of me would rather have stood on that deck in 1849, instead of sitting and procrastinating in front of my laptop in 2010.
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Schraal nominaal Lucas. Nu het einde van je studententijd nabij is raad ik je aan om er helemaal tussenuit te gaan. Tip: huur een auto en doe een roadtrip new York naar San fransisco. Of ga van Vietnam via singapore-bali-n.guinea naar melborne.
LUCAS! This is what I think about most of the time. I want to be an explorer, travel through the Amazon documenting species for the first time, or something. Sometimes it feels like all the “cool stuff” has already been discovered. But I try to think about it like the CMF problem – focusing on the big things and ignoring the cool little ones. And we both appreciate how awesome the little species can be.
Anyway, I’m a rambler, but good luck and an early congratulations from Philadelphia
Congratulations on the thesis. I loved the post by the way.
Congrats! Hope everything goes well. Do you have plans for what to do next, or still uncertain?
Lol i feel a bit sneaky now I only had to spend four years working for my MSci
@everybody Thanks for all the congratulations, but I’ll just wait a little bit longer with accepting them until I safely graduated ;). Thesis is handed in now, so it’s no longer in my hands!
@Jarno Time off komt er zeker aan! Zo nominaal is ook maar niks ;).
@Lab Rat You should feel sneaky! The Dutch education system takes a looong time. A PhD requires you to study 4 more years and publishing 3-4 papers. Talk about putting on the pressure!