Ready to revisit (some) of my thesis

Writing a thesis is hard.  Doing research is hard.  Pursuing a Ph.D. is a bit insane.  I'm still not fully healed from the experience.  But I'm starting to rediscover the joy of why I wanted to be a scientist in the first place.

I've had enough time away from my doctoral studies now, to look back upon the work I did during that time with a different degree of appreciation.  While in the midst of researching, writing, editing, plotting, writing, theorizing, editing, deleting, and constantly rephrasing - one comes to despise the work a bit and question, with the deepest sincerity, one’s life choices.  When I finally hit submit on that thesis, the last thing I wanted to do was think… about any of it.

A topic that keeps coming back into my head, slowly at first, and now almost every day is the chapter I wrote on non-human aquatic architecture.  A research project well suited to the isolation of the COVID pandemic, I conducted a literature review of 120 species that build within aquatic environments.  From bacteria to whales, I spent hours on Google Scholar, searching for species and the things they would build.  I would find species, not one at a time, but in groups of five or so and then flounder, finding nothing until I found the next relevant keyword.  Once I discovered the word “ichnology”, I hit a gold mine of burrowers.  When I included “mucus" in my search term, some of the most creative structures started to populate my list.  As my vocabulary expanded so too did my list of architects.  Some of my best leads came from watching fisherman videos on YouTube or nature documentaries on Disney+ with my nieces.  My social media feeds also produced wonderful leads.

This revived interest is in part inspired by my social media feeds of scientists posting about their findings of new species in the deep ocean (helping me expand the list I started in graduate school), the books I’ve finally have gotten to read for the pleasure of reading - reigniting the joy science brought me as a young adult, and my nieces who are delighted when I share with them a bit a trivia about some aquatic species I studied during my thesis studies (reminding me that science can act as a form of great storytelling).

Studying these many species changed my worldview.  Made my world a little bit bigger, weirder, and all the more interesting.  The solutions many of the species have made to cope with their environment reveals that humans are not the only species on this planet capable of innovation.

I never managed to publish this chapter.  But after nearly two years away from it, I can finally look at this work with clearer eyes, without the anxiety of a looming deadline and thesis defense.  The writing could be better (much better) but I am pleased with the content; impressed by that younger version of me and what she was able to find in the literature.

I was lonely writing my thesis.  That is not a mistake I wish to make again.  As I go through and edit this massive chapter, I intend to blog, vlog, post, and write to my socials about some of the species that I find particularly unique.

I am now ready to edit this work and…. to submit it to some journal… somewhere.