LETTER- Sometimes, the best advice is none

I enjoyed Turner Hay's back-page story, ["ESSAY- A plea: Don't ask this UVA grad about his job," April 16], especially his well-placed advice to people to bag the advice. It brought back memories.

When I first went job hunting, in the '80s, my older relatives and friends uniformly told me to find a company I wanted to work for, and then to barge in and demand work, and not take no for an answer.

 Which would have been good advice, had there been want-ads reading, "Help wanted, Idiot." 

 But my best story about unsolicited advice comes from my graduate school days. Everybody in the world seemed to know how to write a doctoral dissertation, and to need to advise me on the subject. Everyone, that is, except for my father-in-law and sister-in-law, who kept their mouths shut. Both of them actually have Ph.Ds, so they knew there was no ready answer.

I wish Mr. Hay best of luck in whatever he does.

Cora Schenberg
Woolen Mills

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