"Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." --Bill Nye
There is one thing about this summer that was brand new for me. I had to figure out how to network. When I went up to Purdue for their career day, that's one thing they really drilled into me. I sat down that afternoon and wrote out a plan, kind of a brainstorming page, of the people I knew who could help me get plugged in.
An early meet-up with my old friend and former 5-1 parent, John, sent me in the right direction. He told me I needed to start calling people and setting up meetings. He said not to set these meetings up as a "job search meeting", but just to sit people down and have them tell me about what they do. This was one of the smartest things I was told all summer.
This led me to meeting up with people like Lacy, Eric, Jim, Kristin, Doug, Libby, Amy, three different people from Purdue's Career Center, Kyle from Butler, Carrie, Julie, Steve, Cynthia, Brian, Susan, Karen, Bret, Karen Carter, Davey, Laura, Jenny, Nick, and Amy. I didn't realize I had met with so many people until the end of the summer. These people were from all kinds of worlds--finance, training, medical research, educational financial planning, publishing, IT, academia, educational software, online education for business, elementary education, and nonprofit work.
As someone who had been pretty limited to the worlds of public education, karate, and camping, this four month investigation broadened my life and worldview considerably. I learned how important it is to learn from everyone. And the best part of it was that everyone I talked to gave me anywhere from three to ten people to contact next. I didn't even count the people I only spoke to on the phone or exchanged emails.
People are extremely helpful, and even more so if they don't see you as begging them for a job.
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