Dear MP,Your writing is excellent and a key to the point. Since communication skills are so important, would you please give tips or advices to young people about how to have great proficiency of communication skills or improve his or his communication skills?

Here we go again . . .There is no such thing as the fully portable, plug in anywhere portfolio of skills. MP, again I think you are on the right track but that your own logic defeats you. Here's an example.When I was in college I learned how to mix drinks and tend bar by working at campus parties and local bars. In the time I spent bumming around after college, I was able to get a job pretty much anywhere I went as a bartender. But it wasn't because I had this portable knowledge that the manager wanted to plug into the establishment. It was because they could call up the last place I had worked and get a reference that I knew what I was doing and wouldn't steal from the register. So, to use your analogy, even though I don't think you can more "nutlike" than bartending, it was still the roots that gave me any value.If anything, I would say that doing really out-there, cutting edge, non standard research can obviate some of the need for networks and connections. If it's any good. And of course the definition of good is how useful it is to all the people who constitute the system of roots and connections and networks. If you watch the movies, you will quickly see that the main conflicts tend to pit a loner or a small group of outcasts against some larger force. Everybody wants to think of himself as a beatiful flower, different from all the rest. But the reality is that few or no people exist in this romantic state of isolation.Whether you are a banker, a quant, a trader, a marketer, or whatever, your value in a system will be determined as a function of how necessary you are to other people in the system getting their own jobs done. I think this might go to your point that doing interesting or even useful research is not enough. If others do not use the output of your work, it indicates a failure to produce economic value. So, do we agree or disagree?

QuoteDarn it, internships aren't to learn hwo to stuff envelopes! Rather, for some reason, firms will give you little viruses free reign inside their cell walls. Run wild! Pollenate!But be careful about it. When I was in college, I had an internship at a major securities firm that I will not name. I was given what I thought was an extraordinary amount of responsibility for someone in my position. (I was about 20 years old, and I think they were paying me slightly above minimum wage at the time.) I almost ended up being implicated in a fairly serious stock fraud investigation, but luckily the feds bought my story that I was just an intern and didn't know anyting except how to stuff envelopes