Being Feisty Posted on February 29, 2008 Attend to finding your own niche and don't just follow orders, Bruce G. Link (bio) counsels.

There was a training program here in psychiatric epidemiology, and just bit of a chance look up there, but the director of that was Bruce Dohrenwend who is still here. He's 80 years old. He just had a Science paper. He turned out to be just a fabulous mentor, and I got engaged in psychiatric epidemiology through that program and stuck with it. Stayed involved with it, became a co-director, and now I'm the director of the program.

There were a lot of difficult decisions along the way. Main decision was staying on and in the same place where your mentor is and all your professors were. And that's difficult in a way, because, where do you stop being a student and you become a colleague? It took longer to have that occur for me. Every once in a while there was a little tension, but it's all worked out great in the long run.

You have to make sure that you keep your own interests in mind and that you don't do just what you're told to do. What's your unique thing? If you have a good mentor they'll support that and help you find it. Not that there won't be tension along the way sometimes, but you do have to be feisty, you do have to go out there and be bold and try stuff.

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