Monday 21 March 2011

Rabbits eat foxes.

A true story:

Rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, typing away on his laptop.  Along comes Fox, out for a walk.  Fox asks Rabbit,
"Hey Rabbit, what are you doing?"
Rabbit says, "I'm writing my thesis!"
Fox replies "That's funny, I didn't know rabbits could write.  What's it about?"
Rabbit says, "It's about how rabbits eat foxes!"
Fox scoffs "That's ridiculous! Everyone knows that rabbits don't eat foxes."
Rabbit say "Sure they do, and I can prove it. Come have a look at the experiment I'm running right now in my rabbithole."
They both go down the rabbithole and a bit of a scuffle is heard. After a few minutes, Rabbit returns, alone and chewing on a bit of foxtail, and goes back to his laptop.

Then along comes Wolf, out for a walk.  Wolf asks Rabbit,

"Hey Rabbit, what are you doing?"
Rabbit says, "I'm writing my thesis!"
Wolf replies "That's funny, I didn't know rabbits could write.  What's it about?"
Rabbit says, "It's about how rabbits eat wolves!"
Wolf scoffs "That's ridiculous! Everyone knows that rabbits don't eat wolves."
Rabbit say "Sure they do, and I can prove it.  I've just finished a regression analysis, come have a look at the results, it's in my rabbithole."
They both go down the rabbithole and there's some thumping and crashing. After a few minutes, Rabbit returns, alone and munching on some wolf paw, and resumes typing.

Bear comes along, asks Rabbit what he's doing, Rabbit says "I'm writing my thesis, it's on how rabbits eat bears;" Bear says "That's ridiculous, don't be silly;" Rabbit says "No no, I'll show you;" they go down the rabbithole, and guess what they see there?

In one corner of Rabbit's burrow, there's a pile of fox bones.  In another corner, there's a pile of wolf bones.  On the other side of the room, there's a huge lion belching and picking his teeth.  He tosses a wolf bone to Rabbit and nods his approval.

Moral: It doesn't matter what your thesis topic is.  It doesn't matter what your data tell you. It doesn't matter how many times your topic changes or what complete rubbish it is.  All that matters is who your thesis advisor is.

Now, back to working on my poster for the upcoming conference.



1 comment:

  1. You cracked me up. I have to re-post this on my Facebook page. You're probably too smart to waste your time on Facebook, but if you're there, I hope you'll connect to me.

    Best,
    Jan

    ReplyDelete