Sicco's Bio

What drives the choices of a young man cannot be stated in one blog. Furthermore it is hard to tell whether one blog can state the truth, but I might as well give it a try.

Born in a sleepy suburb invaginated by highways it seemed to me that I might as well move to the city. At first I was determined to study Philosophy, and the big question I wanted to answer was: what can we know? During a school project (on primate ethology) a friend of mine handed me a brochure about the Bachelor Psychobiology, she thought I might like it. Psychobiology was described as the science of the mind and behaviour and for some reason I immediately felt like I understood what that meant.

Of course! My initial question could be answered much easier if I would know how the think machine upstairs actually works!

Now, years later, I admire the high (naïve) expectancies I had. One does not grasp the biological basis of thought in a couple of years (not in centuries for that matter), but that doesn't make studying it less exciting. I had great fun during my Bachelor's and within three years it was all over again and (as is very usual in the Dutch educational system) once again I had to choose what I wanted to do next.

This proved to be much more of a challenge than I thought. Conveniently I put aside this difficult choice and decided to run for the student council of the university and the faculty and became a member of the council. Besides this I also chaired a committee (some of my classmates will remember) that organised a conference on Science and Religion. All of this put a great claim on my energy reserves (though I do have plenty) but I loved it.

Of course a year is through before you know it and before too long I again was confronted with the same choice I had to make a year before. The Master Brain and Cognitive Sciences attracted me in a way very similar to the Bachelor Psychobiology. A fresh and inspiring idea (and ideal) of integrating methods and theories in order to find new answers, and more importantly: new questions. Neuroscience was my track of choice, for obvious reasons.

Neuroscience Rules!