Over the past few years, Jeroen Geurts has been invited to give interviews, college tour sessions, keynote lectures and be on discussion panels, all for the purpose of helping students of various academic levels figure out how to be good scientists. How to be successful scientists. He has seen sincere anguish and doubt among the audience on more than one occasion. This letter to his actual, potential and hypothetical students summarizes most of what he said about the subject over the years. I...