10 rules for the career of your dreams ;-)
A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a short presentation at a career workshop for visiting international students at EPFL. The idea of the event was to have a few speakers who all shared an academic background to reflect on their (very different) career paths. As I started writing down the things that have guided me throughout the years, I began to realize that this would end up being one of those lists (“12 things to do before you die”), and naturally, I tried to come up with the tackiest title I could imagine, which is the title of this post.
Underneath the tacky title, however, is a serious list of rules that I’ve developed over the years. Some of these rules I’ve known to be helpful since I was a high school student. Others I’ve discovered much later, looking back on my path and trying to figure out, with hindsight, why I went one way, rather than the other.
Almost two years ago, I’ve received an email from a student asking for career advice. I answered, and decided to post the answer on this blog. That post — advice to a student — has been viewed a few hundred times since then, and I figured I should also share the career workshop talk, as a few people, today and in the future, may find it helpful. There is little use in uploading the slides since they were just the list of the rules. What I am going to do here instead is to expand on each of the rules a little more. This is a bit of an experiment to me, but hopefully, this will work out fine. Each of the ten rules will be its own post, and I will keep updating this post with links to each rule once they get published. So without further ado, here is the unfinished list of rules which I hope to complete over the next few weeks:
1. Do novel, interesting things
2. If you can’t decide, choose change
3. Enthusiasm makes up for a lot
4. Surround yourself with people who are better than you
