Helping someone to see and believe in what they are capable of is a gift that costs us almost nothing but can impact someone's life tremendously.

If you’re working toward a big goal, you *will* face frustration and failure. It’s important to remember that frustration and failure are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of growth.

Yes! Rather than strive for perfection, we can strive to master the skill of strategic imperfection - the ability to evaluate what level of imperfection makes for “good enough” in each experiment, presentation, manuscript, or proposal.

Being a great mentor requires taking the focus off of ourselves and recognizing: -the people we mentor are not us -what worked for us may not work for them -just because we dealt with something doesn’t mean they should have to also

If you’re thinking about grad school, research is certainly important. It’s also important to think about the skills you will need for your future career - leadership, communication, teaching, project management, etc - and find programs or PIs that will help you build those.

No matter how long I’m in academia: -the rejections still sting -giving a talk still makes me nervous -getting everything done still feels overwhelming The challenges don’t go away with time, but over time I can keep getting better at managing them.