"Any General Advice for Young Scholars?"

A week ago a writer for the Atlantic asked me if I had any advice for young scholars.  I have lots and lots of advice, but here’s an expansion on three quick points I shared.

     1) Being a scholar and an academic is an unbelievably great calling.  It is totally enriching, and you can't let some of the bumpy times that you see me going through dissuade you from a great career.  

        2) No paper’s perfect, and you need to find the right balance between perfection and completion -- between perfecting something versus completing it.  There's tons of "perfect" dissertations that have never been completed.  There's tons of "perfect" papers that have never been submitted.  You want to balance off polishing the perfect paper for 20 years with trying to make sure that if there were any errors  they probably wouldn't change the basic conclusion.  

        3) You can do research to impress other academics, or you can do research to solve problems.  Doing it for academics is more prestigious, but doing it to solve real problems in the real world is very gratifying — very enriching.  Having someone say, “I do something differently because of your research, and it works for me” takes away some of the the sting of embarrassing mistakes.  

For 30 years I have hoped my research would make people healthier and happier. That's been my specific mission, and it's very motivating.   If your research is pointed at a mission that's important to you, it can be incredibly motivating , , ,  even in bumpy times.