Thursday, March 25, 2010

Good enough

As I am nearing the deadline for submitting my phd thesis, I am constantly battling with the thought that it is not good enough. That it could be so much better if I had more time to work on it. I found this great quote today from Scott Gilbert, author of the text book Developmental Biology and it gives me comfort.

"As Ian Wilmut (2001) said, "Life is messy, and science is a slice of life." If you seek perfection, go into math. Evolution and embryology make do with what they got, and "good enough" is indeed good enough."

All I really needed to know I learned during gastrulation.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2008 Spring;7(1):12-3.
Wilmut, I. (2001). Wilmut I. et al. The Second Creation: Dolly in the Age of Biological Control, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

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Invictus
William Earnest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

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Monday, March 22, 2010

and miles to go before I sleep

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost

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