Oh, I have several favorite bits of advice. You have to be willing, to ready to eager to work very very hard.
There's a quality you shouldn't have a need for instant gratification. Working on something that might be very menial, I'm not talking about doing the floors in the lab that you do anyway.
Maybe you're working on the data analysis, or you're helping the person run an apparatus. If you're so oriented around instant gratification, you can't really do the kind of work that's required to do real science.
Get to meet some people and work with them. I'm a strong believer in what's called the apprentice system.
I told this to students over and over again. If you're interested in science, go to college if you want, but don't worry about the courses so much.
Sniff around, hunt around, go sniffing at the labs, go sniffing at the places. Talk to graduate students, talk to people who are working on real problems.
And see if they'll maybe have a problem that you could work on with them. And you ask a lot of questions, and not so many that you make yourself into a pain in the tuches, you don't do that.
But enough so that you're learning what you need. Have dreams and pursue them.
I think that's the best advice you can have. It takes hard work but and you can't always reach your dreams.
And we worked for 20 years on something that we might not have reached our dreams. Would I have been sorry?
