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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's thesis, but I've always been a bit proud of my (embarrassingly long-winded and self-indulgent) acknowledgements.

It begins with

> "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline for the submission of this thesis; but for their unwavering absolutism this thesis would exist in a perpetual state of being nearly done. The rest follows in no particular order"

And ends with

> "Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of the two laptops that gave up their magic smoke in the name of science and this thesis. To my Dell Studio 1555 and Asus Zenbook UXA1:

> Do not go gentle into that goodnight

> Rage, rage against the dying of the backlight"

https://jszym.com/attachments/about/thesis.pdf

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I finished my PhD thesis with a quote [0] from Hunter S. Thompson.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/293779-take-it-from-me-ther...

I quoted Cavafy's Ithaka:

"And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef...

Read it again in ten years and judge if you still find it witty. If you still do, I preemptively applaud your self confidence.

It's been 7 since I wrote it. I still appreciate it, if not on its own merits, for being an honest expression of who I was at the time and how its led to who I am now.

I think concerning oneself too much about how things will be perceived in the future like that is a good way to kill off most honest self-expression.

I liked it too. What a jerk that commenter was.

sorry for out of topic: your surname reminded me of the great Polish poet, a Nobel laureate - Wisława Szymborska (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska)

...and I want to add a great video involving her: https://www.ted.com/talks/rives_the_museum_of_four_in_the_mo...

I've been told we're related, but I don't know my polish family well so it might be apocrypha.

> "First and foremost, I’d like to thank the nameless stranger that is responsible for enforcing the deadline…

“I work best under pressure. In fact, I work only under pressure…”

Reminds me of what they say about composer Johann Sebastian Mastropiero:

« Whenever -due to economic necessity- Mastropiero was forced to compose music by request or commission, produced mediocre and inexpressive works. On the contrary, when he only obeyed his inspiration, he never wrote a note. »

wtf leslu on HN!

This made me think of part of RG Collingwood's Autobiography, when he spoke of growing up while many around him were artists of one kind or another.

"During the same years I was constantly watching the work of my father and mother, and the other professional painters who frequented their house, and constantly trying to imitate them ; so that I learned to think of a picture not as a finished product exposed for the admiration of virtuosi, but as the visible record, lying about the house, of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting, so far as the attempt has gone.

I learned what some critics and aestheticians never know to the end of their lives, that no ‘work of art’ is ever finished, so that in that sense of the phrase there is no such thing as a ‘work of art’ at all. Work ceases upon the picture or manuscript, not because it is finished, but because sending-in day is at hand, or because the printer is clamorous for copy, or because ‘I am sick of working at this thing’ or ‘I can’t see what more I can do to it’."

> It might be a bit tasteless to be quoting ones own master's thesis

Eh, its something you poured a fairly significant portion of your life into?

You best brag about it whenever you get the chance :P

Dedications are what you make of them. If you like it, it's a good dedication.

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