This, so much. I love being asked for advice, and love handing it out. It's so much easier to see the problems in someone else's business than it is in my own. Whether that's good advice or not is debatable.
And as an aside, about the "right people" to get advice from: I love that concept of finding a mentor who is only just ahead of you, and therefore is solving the mistakes that you're just about to make.
> finding a mentor who is only just ahead of you, and therefore is solving the mistakes that you're just about to make.
This is gold! I used to buy into the idea that small colleges were a better learning environment for students due to the increased interaction with professors (class sizes ~30 vs 300). However, with younger TA's leading discussion sections, I changed my mind. I've seen professors who totally didn't understand the conceptual problem a student was having because the professor had crossed that bridge 30 years ago and forgot about it.
