The biggest mistake I had in grad school (which I didn't survive) was to talk to other people in the department. I was building a parallel discrete even simula

The biggest mistake I had in grad school (which I didn't survive) was to talk to other people in the department. I was building a parallel discrete even simulator (using an optimistic strategy with rollback). There were a couple of people in the department doing work that needed simulation. I naively went around to them and showed them what I was doing and asked them if there was anything they might find useful. I had read up on the research of the other people in the group, looked at what they were doing and the simulation side was decidedly... um... not robust, shall we say. I identified a bunch of issues that they were certainly having and showed how what I was doing would help them out. OMG. What a shit storm that caused. My supervisor was thankfully very good about it (I had not cleared my wonderful idea with him). But after a few months of being accused of being a spy and people being cautioned not to talk to me under any circumstances, I decided that industry was the way forward for me. I realised I was not suited for the cut-throat nature of academic life ;-) I say this knowing that some people will be shocked, but that anybody in academia will be mostly shocked at my naivety. Seriously bad idea, but one that idealistic, younger me thought was natural.