Learn From People Younger Than You Posted on February 19, 2006 Senior researchers need to keep learning from others, advises David J. Kupfer (bio).

Because, once you're "high", the problem is that you think you have the answers. What I'm going to say is that the techniques and everything we learn... Things change, and if you think you're going to take a question and still be asking that question while trying to answer it with the same groups of techniques and what not 10, 15 years later, then not only are you going to be stale, you're probably not going to get funded again. So this issue of ability to change, to be flexible, and to keep learning, and keep down your notion of self-importance will probably hold you in good stead. The issue of role models and mentors never changes. I encourage people who are "high" as associate professors or professors to keep seeking mentoring and role models. The thing that perhaps changes when you get a little further along is that you can start learning from people younger than you. And if you don't take advantage of that, then you don't learn new techniques, and you don't learn new strategies, and you probably don't learn the new questions you should be asking, and you get stale. You're not going to be that much of a researcher anymore.

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