Cephalopods Rule

In keeping with my tradition of being a well dressed graduate student, for my second day of school, I’m wearing a t-shirt with the following design.

I designed this shirt msyelf in Photoshop (though I scanned the octopus from an invertebrate textbook). The story is a good one. I was taking a 5 week course on marine invertebrates while on Whidbey Island during the summer of 2003. Having exhausted the field biology courses I was interested in taking at Abilene Christian, I opted to take courses through the Au Sable Institute rather than sign up for things like immunology, cancer biology, or other courses on the pre-med (“dark side”) of biology. The Au Sable Institute is a neat place that promotes Christian stewardship of the world around us, and I greatly enjoyed my time there.

During the marine invertebrates course, the professor was talking about cephalopod evolution. Cephalopods are the most advanced of the invertebrates, with some amazing characteristics like relatively large brains, well developed eyes, and for many, the ability to change the color of their skin to match their environments. The professor made a statement something along the lines of “Cephalopods rule, in fact, you could put that on a t-shirt” and went right on with his lecture. I got together some friends and I designed this t-shirt and had it printed, and on the last day of class, everybody wore it underneath a jacket. When he opened his gift and saw his shirt, we all took our jackets off and everybody had a good laugh.