You should do this and this and this
Some people desperately want to be your mentor.
After five shots, this one guy had all the answers. He told me how to do research. How to network. How to submit a job application. How to do an interview. And who to put on my dissertation committee. Definitely not that one professor. Her career was going nowhere.
A few years later, we met up at a conference. He almost knocked himself out by walking into a glass door.
In his defense, it was a very clean door.
But he also didn’t know where his hotel was. Or which hotel he was staying at. A little harder to excuse.
Some of us had rooms with couches. Maybe a spare bed. But honestly, the guy had a rapey reputation. And the guys worried about him puking on their floor, and skipping out on the cleaning bill. Ever good Samaritans, we tossed his drunk ass into an Uber and hoped for the best.
Some people live to give advice. They want to help everyone. Except they define help in a specific way. Really, they just want to tell you what you should really be doing with your time.
These wannabe mentors feed off your energy and attention. They usually haven’t amassed a huge amount of success. Some of them are hiding from their own problems. They want to guide you…
