Contemplation

I love evolution.

But…I have, as of yet, no solid clue as to what I want to devote the rest of my academic career (read: the next 80 years of my life) to.

My passion for my work stems from a love of knowledge/truth in general, and an adoration of animals in particular.

Like all young bucks (or does, I guess if we want to get gender specific) I started off thinking that I would go out and save our furry compatriots from extinction, only to be dissuaded by the corruption and not very scientific ways of conservation biology.

However, if not for an evolution seminar I took in my senior year I would still be an ecologist I guess. Instead I now hungrily study evolutionary genetics, about the dullest thing I could have imagined back in my panda-hugging days, but the most mentally stimulating thing to my mind these days.

I do think that ultimately I want my love for evolutionary genetics to blend back in with my desire to save my favorite animals though – so I’ve been contemplating the evolutionary genetics of conservation recently. Specifically, what factors promote adaptation to novel environments and what factors accelerate extinction.

Between running experiments, analyzing data, writing papers, preparing for conferences and my administrative duties for the grad students union it’s hard to imagine when I’ll have time to paint a pretty research plan. Moreover, there’s the usual extracurricular stuff that seems to pile up as though out of thin air sometimes. Like last Saturday I hopped around to four different parties in one night. And although my agenda was nearly blank on Sunday, it is now completely full with promises of beer and fun times or non-evolutionary academic adventures.

In my wildest dreams I’ll have an entire week to sit outside in the sunshine with birds chirping, cups of tea, and a notebook to think with no other distractions. Reality is another matter I think – and sadly the truth of the matter. Now that I have NSERC though maybe I’ll feel more encouraged to take some time off.

Futility – it seems that that word pops into my mind vocabulary occasionally these days, and just appearing at all is more than I would like. In a perfect world I would slash that word and banish it from existence. In the meantime I’ll do what I always do – which can only be best summarized by this picture I leave you with below…

hello world, did you miss me

Spring is almost here – thank goodness.

After a week of being completely spoiled in Portland (weather spoiled, parent spoiled) I have reluctantly resumed my adult life in the T-dot. I almost got detained in the US though – since although no one detected that my passport had expired leaving Canada, they caught this malfunction on my way back. Sadly they decided I could come back home rather than paying for me to live in Portland forever.

Did I mention I changed careers and have become a professional cake decorator? Not to fear cake connoisseurs, I merely was too cheap to pay for a professionally decorated cake for the departmental Darwin Day celebration and so decided to do the honors myself. Here is my rendition of the Galapagos Islands in memory of my good friend Charles.

I realize I haven’t really spewed anything intelligent on this thing in several months so I’ll try to get on that soon. In the meantime I suggest that everyone read this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8537856.stm