canada goose clearance sale I retire today Why Evolution Is True canada goose clearance sale
canada goose clearance I retire todayBefore people who like this site worrythat I retiring from writing here, let me clarify. That is not what I mean by Posting here will continue goose outlet canada as usual, though there will be only two posts today. Chicago time, I retiring in the conventional sense from my job at the University of Chicago. As I sleep tonight in Poland, seven hours ahead of Chicago, I will betransformed from Professor to Professor Emeritus (or, on this site, to Professor Ceiling Cat, Emeritus).This has been in the offing for two years, but I don often post here about personal issues, and wanted to delay this newsuntil retirement was a fait accompli. And, as today Hili dialogue suggests, not that much will change for me, save that I will no longer do research with my own hands or teach students (emeritus faculty aren allowed to teach at Chicago). I get to keep my office, and will still work hard, but the nature of that work will change a bit.Several years ago, I began to realize that my job as a scientist and academic was not as challenging canada goose outlet woodbury as it had been for the previous 35 canada goose outlet eu years. I had mastered the requisites of such a job: doing research, writing papers, mentoring and teaching students, getting grants, and so on. The one challenge left was discovering new things about evolution, which wasthe really exciting thing about science. I always said that there is nothing comparable to being the first person to see something that nobody seen before. Artists must derive some of the same satisfaction whencreating new fictional worlds, or finding new ways to see the existing world, but it is only those who do science and I mean in the broad sense who are privileged to find and verify new truthsabout our cosmos.But findingtruly new things things that surprise and delight other scientists is very rare, for science, like canada goose outlet store quebec Steve Gould fossil record, is largely canada goose uk tediumpunctuated by canada goose outlet sudden change. And so, as I began to look for more sustainingchallenges; I slowly ratcheted down my research, deciding thatI retire after my one remainingstudent graduated. That decision was madetwo years ago, but the mechanics of retirement and, in truth, my own ambivalence have led to a slight delay. Today, though, is the day.What am I going to do now? Well, I not going to take up golf, which I always found a bit silly. I won do any more work with my own hands but I not going to abandon science. I will still write about it, both on this website and in venues like magazines and their e sites, and I planning canada goose outlet uk a popular book on speciation. Writing, for me, is the New Big Challenge, and one that can never be mastered. That is a challenge that will last a lifetime, forthere is never an end to improving one writing.And I do plan to travel more, visiting those places I longed to see but haven had time: Antarctica, Australia, Southeast Asia, Bali, the wildlife refuges of Africa, Patagonia, and so on.But let me look back now, for I feel the urge to close myacademic career by summarizing it.When I was applying for jobs, myadvisor, Dick Lewontin, used to write in his recommendation letters something like this: Jerry has one fault, he too self deprecating and tends to sell himself short. He was right, for I never wanted to succumb to the arrogance of those who internalize theadmiration they receive. But today I try to be honest without being too self deprecating.So what have I accomplished? First, it been a good career. Scientifically, I accomplished far more than I ever imagined. In truth, had I known as a graduate student the hurdles I have to surmountto become a professor at a great university and accomplisha goodly amount of widely cited research, I probably would have given up. But I didn look at the whole track: I took canada goose outlet online things canada goose outlet black friday sale one hurdle at a time. Now I at the end of the race, and though can say I won, I happy with my finish.What am I proudest of? My research, of course, for the desire to find out things was what made me a scientist. The pivotal moment was when, as an undergraduate in genetics class, we were given two tubes of fruit flies, one withwhite eyes, the other with the normal reddish brown eyes. We were assigned the job of finding out what canada goose outlet store new york mutation caused the eyes to lose pigment. When Icrossed the flies from the two tubes, the offspring had normal colored eyes, but canada goose outlet vancouver when those progeny were crossed among themselves, one gotfour colors in the offspring: normal, white, and two new colors: dark brown and bright orange. How could that be? I remember puzzling this out, and then the solution came to me in a flash while sitting on the bleachersin swimming class. The white eyed fliesmust have twomutant genes, one that blocked the production of red pigment (producing brown eyes), and one blocking the brown pigment (orange eyes). When both mutations were present, no pigment was produced, ergo white eyes. I went back to the lab, tested that theory, and found not only that I was right,but that the two genes resided on the same chromosome (the second),though they were official canada goose outlet far apart. I gave them cumbersome names, canada goose outlet england but they were in fact the classic mutations cinnabar and brown.The excitement of that moment, and the clean results I got when testing my hypothesis, is what made canada goose outlet toronto mean evolutionary geneticist. Since then,I always tried to do experiments in which the resultareclean: experiments in canada goose outlet london uk which there are two possible outcomes that are easily distinguishable. While the study of evolution is often messy, evolutionary genetics is neater, and both my students and I have concentrated on studies in which the results unequivocally favor one hypothesis rather than another. It all goes back to that moment in gym class.I am proudof my work on speciation, and I will try not to be overly modest whenclaimingthat I think I helped revive the study of how species form, at least in a genetic sense a research area that had lain moribund for many years. There is now a cottage industry of work on speciation, much of it canada goose outlet 2015 inspired bythe work my students and I did at TheUniversity canada goose outlet authentic of Maryland (my first job) and then at TheUniversity of Chicago. The specific things we found, and what they meant, will of course be immersed in and then covered by the stream of science, and our names will be forgotten. But that is the fate of most of us, and it is enough for me to have shuntedthe evolutionary biology streamtowards one of its more important questions: why is nature divided up into lumps (species) instead of forming a complete organic continuum? And how do those lumps form? I wasprivileged to have made a few discoveries that helped answerthesequestions, and to have inspired others to make even more discoveries. I still see that book as my true legacy, for canada goose outlet toronto location it not only summed up where the field had gone, but also highlighted itsimportant but unsolved questions, serving as a guide for future research.I also very proud of my graduate students, which are one humanlegacy: the academic sons and daughters whose work will change the course of science long after I I have had a very small output of students: only four, with one of them opting for a career in science writing. The other three are well known academics, and I immensely proud that they all seen as I can really claim credit for their accomplishments, as they were all self starters, nor can I say that I had an eye for https://www.getcanadagooseoutlet.com talent. All I can say is that I sat in the lab with them, engaged in nonstop conversation about scienceas we flies together (counted and manipulated flies under the microscope with ermine furpaintbrushes); and I think thatconversation helped motivate and guide them.AndI proud that up to the very end I did my own research with my own hands. I don fault those senior scientists who tell others what to do and sit in their offices writing up the results of that guided research, but being a lab manager was never my forte. In fact, given that I loved to work at the bench, I didn have time to manage others, and this also constrained me to have only canada goose jacket outlet sale one studentat a time. (I also had only one postdoc, and I am proud of her accomplishmentsas a molecular evolutionary geneticist.)On a more mundane level, I proud of having never gone without grant support for my entire career, something that rarity in these days of tight funding. I had the same grant, renewed every three years, for over three decades: genetics of speciation. I am immensely grateful to the National Institutes of Health for providingthe largesseforall my research.What could I have done better? To a determinist like me, regrets are unproductive (though perhaps useful to others), as I couldn have done other than what I did. But I wish I had been a better teacher, especially of undergraduates. Given that my true love was research, and that one is evaluated at a place like the University of Chicago largely on research rather than teaching, I probably put too little effort into teaching. I wish I had had interacted morewith my undergraduate students, forat the University of Chicago they are a bright and curious bunch. My teaching ratings always came in about average, and I always wished they were higher. canada goose outlet boston On the other hand, a lot of my research was done in collaboration with undergraduates who askedto work in my lab after takingmy evolution course, and several of these have gone on to careers in either science or medicine.The University of Chicago is a diverse and stimulating place: we have great professors and courses in every area of the liberal arts and sciences. I wish I had interacted more with mydiverse colleagues over my career. The University is a bit Balkanized, though, so such opportunities are rare, and there precious little time. But I love the humanities, and wishI had sat in on courses in English, philosophy, history, and the sciences of physical anthropology, paleontology, and so on. Perhaps I have more time to do that now. But atleast canada goose outlet las vegas I fulfilled the two vows I made as an aspiring academic: I would never leave college, and I would always have a job in which I could wear jeans to work.Academics who canada goose outlet vip retire are often asked what advice they have for younger folks. (I have in fact been asked that question repeatedly throughout my career.) And of course we all tend to advise canada goose outlet jackets people to do exactly what we did! For that is really all we can say: do the things that, we think, helped make us personally successful. And here I mentiontwo things, both of which characterized my own career. Perhaps these can influence the neuronal wiring of younger researchers and affect their own lives.First, there is no substitute for hard work. Brains are not enough, and, in truth, I never seen myself as particularly smart. But I have worked very hard often seven days a week and it is to that hard work that I attribute what success I had. Good ideas are few I had about three in my life but everyonehas the capacity (though not perhaps the inclination)to work hard. To all grad students, then: if canada goose outlet mississauga you not in the lab on weekends, you not doing it right. That is not to say that youshouldn have a life outside the lab, for of course that vital, but if you passionate about your work, you want to do it outside conventional work hours. Science is not a nine to five job.The second bit of advice was impartedby my mentor Dick Lewontin at his party at Harvard, when he stood up in front of the coelacanth the fossil fish preserved in a tank offormalin, which Dick pointed out asan appropriate backdrop. He ended his brief remarks by emphasizing theone thinghe wanted theyounger generation to absorb. The unfortunate result is thatthegraduate students and postdocs are left picking up the crumbs, seen as mere functionaries. That is not the way it should be. To me, the only justification for putting your name on a student paper is that you either did a large portion of the work with your own hands or contributed substantially to the analysis. Those are our duties as professors, while our privilege is to do the science canada goose factory outlet and find out new things.One anecdote about this. My first well known canada goose outlet store montreal papershowed that,as revealed by gel electrophoresis, some genes had many more alleles (gene forms) than previously thought up to twenty or thirty forms segregating in a population. At the end of the day, I timidlyplaced the paper on his desk for his comments and emendations.The next morning I found the paper on my desk, covered with red scrawls (Dick handwriting was atrocious), but with Lewontin name crossed out. He told me, ever do that again. Lewontin was part of a lineage of academics whoabjured credit mongering. canada goose outlet store toronto His own advisor, Theodosius Dobzhansky, often published researchthat derivedfromhis own ideas, forwhich he did much of the physical labor ofreading chromosome slides, and for which he wrote the entire paper and yet his name wasn under the title. And Dobzhansky came from the very first modern genetics lab that of Thomas Hunt Morgan whose members (save, perhaps, H. J. Muller) didn care verymuch about who got the credit. I am proud to be part of that lineage and of trying to sustainits traditions.I often toldthat without putting your name on every paper coming from your lab,you won advance professionally. That is not true. For 30 years I submitted grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health listing all the papers published during myprevious funding period. Many of these papers did not have my name on them. And theNIH didn care a bit: they cared about how much good research had been done on their dime, not whether my namewas on the papers; and they continued to fund me.So to the professors: try to not grab credit that you really don deserve. It is your jobto help students write papers and find good ideas; it is your jobto guide their research and suggest how to analyze that research. But that does not justify your taking credit for their work. To the students: do not assume automatically that your professor name should go on yourpaper. Perhaps that the lab and you must hewto itlest you offend your boss. Buteven if you must succumb to this form of coercion, try not to do it yourself when you become the boss.And with that adviceI will end this post. I have had a good run, I regret nothing, at least scientifically, and I been given the greatest privilege a scientist can have: to be the first to discover some previously unknown things about our universe canada goose clearance.