你最想给学术界后辈的几点建议是什么？
如果能回到你学术生涯的起点，你会给那时的自己一些什么建议呢？关于读博，关于平衡课业与科研、生活与学术，关于科研方法，关于心态，关于找教职，甚至关于转行与工业界。
虽然我自己是工程学科背景，今年开始在UCLA读硕士，已经做过一些研究了有四篇小文章。想听听大家的故事，但是不限学科背景，无论成果多少，也不在于国内国外，谢谢！
学术界的形势年年都在变化。我觉得，对初入行者，最重要的是想清楚自己做科研的动机，或者，用时下时髦的词来说，初心是什么？自己是否有做科研的大心脏，做到「举世誉之而不加劝，举世非之而不加沮」？自己对以后人生道路的期待到底怎么样，是不是「起码得在本科学校任教才算满意」？——学术界前辈听了这种话当然会想笑，也可能是苦笑，不过说实话，社会上很多人，包括博士新生的一些亲人，甚至博士生自己，真就是这么想的。自己是否真的不太在乎周围人的想法？——很多学生以为自己不在乎周围人的想法，实际上过年回家被亲戚问工作情况问收入问婚育情况的时候还是会沮丧。
如果你看了这么几句话觉得很沉重，晚上都睡不著觉，那还是尽早准备去业界上班吧。如果你觉得这些也没啥，我更关心科研本身的内容，那可以进这一行试试。据我观察，学术界做得好的人，一般都有一种「举重若轻」的气质。他们也了解这些世俗的现实问题，但他们不会让焦虑支配自己的情绪，他们仍然能有心情有精力去做科研上该做的事情。
- 学术的经济模式和娱乐圈很像，前2%的人会有90%的资源。
- 塞翁失马，焉知非福，错过了就错过了，下次机会会有的。学术界是知识的边缘，机会很多，你只需要捡到一个。
- 你的学术声望比一切都重要，圈子就那么大，抬头不见低头见，不要为了芝麻不择手段，丢了西瓜。
- 被拒绝是正常的，是常态，很轻易被接受才是不正常的，不要让拒绝影响自己。毕竟一篇论文的发表只需要被接受一次。
- 接受人的不同，观点的不同，追求的不同，习惯的不同。接受他人，才能合作，才能有碰撞和好结果。
- 战略上不要懒惰，多参加社交，多跨界，多看。好的工作很少是靠时间堆出来的。
- 焦虑是正常的，焦虑使人思考，是好事，欢迎自己的焦虑。
- 教职的标准是独立，博士博后的标准是执行力。若目标是教职，做好本职工作是不够的，请提前计划。
2020-05-17补充
两句简单的话，但是是我收到的最好的建议。
9. 永远不要当大海里的一滴水。
10. 永远比别人期望的多做一点点。不需要很多，只需要多一点点。
前段时间偶然获得数学家 Rota 的两篇小短文，讲述了混迹数学界的一些经验，并给予了一些忠告。在此发给大家，希望对大家有一定的启发作用。
一代数学大师 ROTA 的经验与忠告
义大利裔的美籍数学家 Gian-Carlo Rota（1932 年 4 月 27 日 – 1999 年 4 月 18 日）是一位杰出的组合学家。他曾是研究泛函分析（Functional Analysis）出身，后来由于个人兴趣的转移，成为了一位研究组合数学（Combinatorial Mathematics）的学者。Rota 的职业生涯大部分都在麻省理工学院（MIT）度过，曾担任 MIT 的数学教授与哲学教授。
从数学家族谱（Mathematics Genealogy Project）上面可以看到：Gian-Carlo Rota 的导师是 Jacob T. Schwartz，Rota 于 1956 年在耶鲁大学获得数学博士学位，其博士论文的题目是 Extension Theory of Differential Operators。
在 1997 年，Rota 发表了两篇关于人生经验和忠告的文章，分别是 「Ten Lessons I wish I Had Been Taught」 和 「Ten Lessons for the Survival of a Mathematics Department「。下面就来逐一分享这两篇文章中的一些观点。
讲座（Lecturing）
每次讲座或者分享的时候都有几个需要注意的事情。
（a）每次讲座都应该只有一个重点。（Every lecture should make only one main point.）
Every lecture should state one main point and repeat it over and over, like a theme with variations. An audience is like a herd of cows, moving slowly in the direction they are being driven towards. If we make one point, we have a good chance that the audience will take the right direction; if we make several points, then the cows will scatter all over the field. The audience will lose interest and everyone will go back to the thoughts they interrupted in order to come to our lecture.
（b）不要超时。（Never run overtime.）
Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one micro-century as von Neumann used to say) everybody』s attention will turn elsewhere even if we are trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis. One minute overtime can destroy the best of lectures.
（c）提及听众的成果。（Relate to your audience.）
As you enter the lecture hall, try to spot someone in the audience with whose work you have some familiarity. Quickly rearrange your presentation so as to manage to mention some of that person』s work. In this way, you will guarantee that at least one person will follow with rapt attention, and you will make a friend to boot.
Everyone in the audience has come to listen to your lecture with the secret hope of hearing their work mentioned.
（d）给听众一些值得回忆的东西。（Give them something to take home.）
Most of the time they admit that they have forgotten the subject of the course and all the mathematics I thought I had taught them. However, they will gladly recall some joke, some anecdote, some quirk, some side remark, or some mistake I made.
板书技巧（Blackboard Technique）
（a）开讲前保持黑板干净（Make sure the blackboard is spotless.）
By starting with a spotless blackboard you will subtly convey the impression that the lecture they are about to hear is equally spotless.
（b）从黑板的左上角开始书写（Start writing on the top left-hand corner.）
What we write on the blackboard should correspond to what we want an attentive listener to take down in his notebook. It is preferable to write slowly and in a large handwriting, with no abbreviations.
When slides are used instead of the blackboard, the speaker should spend some time explaining each slide, preferably by adding sentences that are inessential, repetitive, or superfluous, so as to allow any member of the audience time to copy our slide. We all fall prey to the illusion that a listener will find the time to read the copy of the slides we hand them after the lecture. This is wishful thinking.
多次公布同样的结果（Publish the Same Result Several Times）
The mathematical community is split into small groups, each one with its own customs, notation, and terminology. It may soon be indispensable to present the same result in several versions, each one accessible to a specific group; the price one might have to pay otherwise is to have our work rediscovered by someone who uses a different language and notation and who will rightly claim it as his own.
说明性的工作反而更有可能被记得（You Are More Likely to Be Remembered by Your Expository Work）
When we think of Hilbert, we think of a few of his great theorems, like his basis theorem. But Hilbert』s name is more often remembered for his work in number theory, his Zahlbericht, his book Foundations of Geometry, and for his text on integral equations.
每个数学家只有少数的招数（Every Mathematician Has Only a Few Tricks）
You admire Erdo?s』s contributions to mathematics as much as I do, and I felt annoyed when the older mathematician flatly and definitively stated that all of Erdo?s』s work could be 「reduced」 to a few tricks which Erdo?s repeatedly relied on in his proofs. What the number theorist did not realize is that other mathematicians, even the very best, also rely on a few tricks which they use over and over. But on reading the proofs of Hilbert』s striking and deep theorems in invariant theory, it was surprising to verify that Hilbert』s proofs relied on the same few tricks. Even Hilbert had only a few tricks!
别害怕犯错（Do Not Worry about Your Mistakes）
There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.
使用费曼的方法（Use the Feynman Method）
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 「How did he do it? He must be a genius!」
不要吝啬你的赞美（Give Lavish Acknowledgments）
I have always felt miffed after reading a paper in which I felt I was not being given proper credit, and it is safe to conjecture that the same happens to everyone else.
写好摘要（Write Informative Introductions）
If we wish our paper to be read, we had better provide our prospective readers with strong motivation to do so. A lengthy introduction, summarizing the history of the subject, giving everybody his due, and perhaps enticingly outlining the content of the paper in a discursive manner, will go some of the way towards getting us a couple of readers.
为老年做好心理准备（Be Prepared for Old Age）
You must realize that after reaching a certain age you are no longer viewed as a person. You become an institution, and you are treated the way institutions are treated. You are expected to behave like a piece of period furniture, an architectural landmark, or an incunabulum.
不要在其他系讲自己系同事的坏话（Never wash your dirty linen in public）
Departments of a university are like sovereign states: there is no such thing as charity towards one another.
别越级打报告（Never go above the head of your department）
Your letter will be viewed as evidence of disunity in the rank and file of mathematicians. Human nature being what it is, such a dean or provost is likely to remember an unsolicited letter at budget time, and not very kindly at that.
不要进行领域评价（Never Compare Fields）
You are not alone in believing that your own field is better and more promising than those of your colleagues. We all believe the same about our own fields. But our beliefs cancel each other out. Better keep your mouth shut rather than make yourself obnoxious. And remember, when talking to outsiders, have nothing but praise for your colleagues in all fields, even for those in combinatorics. All public shows of disunity are ultimately harmful to the well-being of mathematics.
别看不起别人使用的数学（Remember that the grocery bill is a piece of mathematics too）
The grocery bill, a computer program, and class field theory are three instances of mathematics. Your opinion that some instances may be better than others is most effectively verbalized when you are asked to vote on a tenure decision. At other times, a careless statement of relative values is more likely to turn potential friends of mathematics into enemies of our field. Believe me, we are going to need all the friends we can get.
善待擅长教学的老师（Do not look down on good teachers）
Mathematics is the greatest undertaking of mankind. All mathematicians know this. Yet many people do not share this view. Consequently, mathematics is not as self-supporting a profession in our society as the exercise of poetry was in medieval Ireland. Most of our income will have to come from teaching, and the more students we teach, the more of our friends we can appoint to our department. Those few colleagues who are successful at teaching undergraduate courses should earn our thanks as well as our respect. It is counterproductive to turn up our noses at those who bring home the dough.
学会推销自己的数学成果（Write expository papers）
When I was in graduate school, one of my teachers told me, 「When you write a research paper, you are afraid that your result might already be known; but when you write an expository paper, you discover that nothing is known.」
It is not enough for you (or anyone) to have a good product to sell; you must package it right and advertise it properly. Otherwise you will go out of business.
When an engineer knocks at your door with a mathematical question, you should not try to get rid of him or her as quickly as possible.
不要把提问者拒之门外（Do not show your questioners to the door）
What the engineer wants is to be treated with respect and consideration, like the human being he is, and most of all to be listened to with rapt attention. If you do this, he will be likely to hit upon a clever new idea as he explains the problem to you, and you will get some of the credit.
Listening to engineers and other scientists is our duty. You may even learn some interesting new mathematics while doing so.
联合阵线（View the mathematical community as a United Front）
Grade school teachers, high school teachers, administrators and lobbyists are as much mathematicians as you or Hilbert. It is not up to us to make invidious distinctions. They contribute to the well-being of mathematics as much as or more than you or other mathematicians. They are right in feeling left out by snobbish research mathematicians who do not know on which side their bread is buttered. It is our best interest, as well as the interest of justice, to treat all who deal with mathematics in whatever way as equals. By being united we will increase the probability of our survival.
把科学从不可靠中拯救出来（Attack Flakiness）
Flakiness is nowadays creeping into the sciences like a virus through a computer, and it may be the present threat to our civilization. Mathematics can save the world from the invasion of the flakes by unmasking them and by contributing some hard thinking. You and I know that mathematics is not and will never be flaky, by definition.
This is the biggest chance we have had in a long while to make a lasting contribution to the well-being of Science. Let us not botch it as we did with the few other chances we have had in the past.
善待所有人（Learn when to withdraw）
Let me confess to you something I have told very few others (after all, this message will not get around much): I have written some of the papers I like the most while hiding in a closet. When the going gets rough, we have recourse to a way of salvation that is not available to ordinary mortals: we have that Mighty Fortress that is our Mathematics. This is what makes us mathematicians into very special people. The danger is envy from the rest of the world.
When you meet someone who does not know how to differentiate and integrate, be kind, gentle, understanding. Remember, there are lots of people like that out there, and if we are not careful, they will do away with us, as has happened many times before in history to other Very Special People.
参考资料：
- Rota, Gian-Carlo. 「Ten lessons I wish I had been taught.」 Indiscrete thoughts. Birkh?user, Boston, MA, 1997. 195-203.
- Rota, Gian-Carlo. 「Ten Lessons for the Survival of a Mathematics Department.」 Indiscrete Thoughts. Birkh?user, Boston, MA, 1997. 204-208.
谢谢邀请。
学术圈劝退文章和回答已经够多了，劝退依据主要是性价比不高。在此也不重复。
除了钱和生活的原因外，还要考虑的一个问题是学术圈现在基本都是实行的是团队课题组制度，这种制度下的大老板对团队下的每个成员职业发展影响很大，不管是博士生还是职工。实际上这种制度就是科研圈的资本主义制度（甚至可以说是封建地主制度也没问题），团队里的每一个人都被老板剥削著剩余价值。
找科研条件好，老板人品好的团队加入，这其实只是很小的一方面。如果想在科研领域有一番天地，一个更加准确的说法是：在自己确有科研能力的基础上，找到一个愿意成全你的老板。
什么意思呢，很多课题组成立之初，老板的目的就是为自己谋取利益出发的（尤其是工科），根本没有考虑过培养出比自己更加优秀的科研人员。
可以想像一下，一个愿意成全你的老板应该具有怎样的品质：
1首先这个老板得慧眼识珠。（这个比例不算低但也不高）
2其次这个老板愿意承认有员工比自己厉害的。（这很难）
3老板愿意为了你的学术前途牺牲掉自己的部分利益（花钱送你去上暑期学校，让你去开会等等），甚至大部分利益（把你送给学术实力更强的地方学习）。工科大部分老板不把你当廉价劳动力就不错了，非亲非故谁会考虑手下打工员工前途。（这很难）
在现有科研资本主义制度下，满足上述条件的老板可谓是科研圈的圣贤了。
但如果真的满足上述条件，那就不要辜负导师的期望。
我看到很多人说混学术圈要找到一个大腿。此话倒是不假，但是很多学术大佬只是把你当他的一兵一卒，并不是要支持你发展，因此并不是进入一个大组就有所谓的学术前途了。
针对应用/实用型研究，两个建议：
一，不要通过论文来学习知识；
二，去学习研究方向的「元学科」。
解释：
很多科研新人，因为刚接触科研前沿，很容易被手里的几十篇论文迷糊了眼睛。通常来说，他们在阅读这些论文之后，往往会做一个比较详细的综述，之后就把视野局限在了这些论文中，而后续的研究工作也只是基于这些论文的微创新。
这会带来三个严重的问题：第一，他们的知识是完全碎片化的，没有学科框架，因为论文与论文之间本身就是碎片化的；第二，知识面狭窄，因为仅通过论文学习知识，自然而然就把视野局限在了论文所涉及的知识面上；第三，层次低，因为论文往往是把某个已有的东西做了微小改进，那么你再去啃这些论文，等同于吃二手饭，层次很低。
因此，对于一个有心学术的人，首先应该去系统地学习正经教材。只有这些教材能帮你建立完备的学科架构。其次，应该学习元学科教材，进一步拓展视野。譬如，假如你是做天文数据处理的学生，那么元学科就可以是数据科学和统计学；假如你是控制理论的学生，那么数学里关于非线性和动态的部分就是元学科；假如是微电子类学生，那么半导体物理和半导体器件物理学则应该作为元学科。当然，这些元学科只是我限于个人的理解，并不一定准确，但思路可以总结为：去寻找当前研究课题或方向的「根源」学科，拓展视野。
总体来说，除去研究工作占用的时间，剩下的时间都可以用来学习。而这部分所能挤出来的学习时间，应该把其中的大部分用于专业教材的学习和巩固；把其中的一部分用于元学科的学习，拓展视野；最后把其中较少的部分用于阅读顶刊和顶会论文。论文阅读应当少且精。也就是说，按重要性来讲，学科专业书籍&>元学科书籍&>&>论文。
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