I frequently caution those in grad school against ambition. I’ve seen ambition take a high toll from too many bright young people, and seen them later declare that they’re happier after deciding to focus more on quality-of-life than ambition.
I feel like there’s a trick being played by the word “ambition” here. By the literal definition of the word you can be ambitious about anything, including quality of life. Ambition would just mean aiming for a very high QOL by your own definition. But yeah, it often gets narrowed into “succeed at this particular thing by particular metrics”, and I imagine being told to give up on ambition is very freeing in those cases.
I feel like there’s a trick being played by the word “ambition” here. By the literal definition of the word you can be ambitious about anything, including quality of life. Ambition would just mean aiming for a very high QOL by your own definition. But yeah, it often gets narrowed into “succeed at this particular thing by particular metrics”, and I imagine being told to give up on ambition is very freeing in those cases.