Beware of Anti-Mentors Posted on December 3, 2007 When Gary S. Sachs (bio) decided to take time off for child-rearing, he was told, "You'll never work in this town again."

I think the first experience with mentors, you might call them more anti-mentors, because I had gone to graduate school. And I went back to medical school, and I was married early on. And the idea, since my wife at the time was finishing her training, that when we had children, I would take off and be there with the child so she could complete her training.

I remember the chair of the department calling me in at that time and saying, “Gary, if you do this, your career’s over. Nobody will ever take you seriously again.” And that was really a worrisome kind of comment to happen, and I would tell any young person that if you hear that kind of comment that says you have to do it one way, like following this railroad track or forget it, that that was absolutely wrong. I took the year off. I went to do my residency at Mass General, and I found that the world doesn’t work that way.

There are so many ways to get to where you want to go, so much more flexibility than many people would lead you to believe. I think you have to plot your course by looking at the people who are doing what you want to do, seeing how they got there, and you’ll usually find that there are many, many different paths.

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