1. The Idea
You do you. Chances are you are an adult human being, so you will find your own way sooner or later, and the sooner you do it, the better. If you listen to too much advice from senior academics, you might be ill-advised, because they lived in a different era, in a different lab, with different everything. Find folks in a similar position, team up, and find your way.
2. Related Quote
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
Steve Jobs
3. Why This Matters to You
The advice you get about where to publish, how to win funding and when to go up for tenure often comes from careers built under rules that no longer apply. Publication venues, funder priorities and hiring criteria have shifted since your senior colleagues made their moves. Peers at your stage face the same decisions right now, so their sense of what works is current. Teaming up with them gives you co-authors, grant partners and people to compare notes with on supervision and teaching. The earlier you build that circle and trust your own judgment, the less time you spend on a path designed for someone else.
4. Counter Viewpoint
Yet senior academics have watched many careers unfold, including the ones that quietly failed. They know how reviewers think, how panels decide and which mistakes cost years. Peers share your blind spots, so a group of them can march confidently in the wrong direction together. Senior colleagues also write the letters, sit on the committees and open the doors that your peers cannot. The hard part is telling which of their advice is outdated and which still holds, and you rarely find out until later.