General Advice

This has to be one of the best articles. Try to read all of it again and again and see how much of it is true...besides the sunscreen.

"Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" by Mary Schmich. (don't know why they removed the link, updated now!)

Richard Feynmann was a legendary physicist and teacher. I just love his concept of beauty and purpose in science. This is a video of his interview.

Richard Feynmann - The pleasure of finding things out

Academic Careers and Research

Richard Hamming's Talk at Bell Labs is a great preview of what to do if you want to be a successful scientist. Fascinating stuff and a lot of experiences.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Postscript/hamming.ps [You and Your Research]

How to Have a Bad Career In Research/Academia, and some other interesting non-technical talks

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pattrsn/talks/nontech.html

I found this a very interesting article for young professors. Infact, i found it quite true since I also taught at a university for a while (long story!). So be prepared for stuff mentioned here..

"Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught" by Gian-Carlo Rota