Over spring break, a random friend of a friend was sitting in my common room, explaining to me the importance of networking. Every opportunity they have received was because of someone they met at their last job. Of course networking is something that I've been told since I got to college, but I never really got it. Not until now. I thought back to two weeks earlier, when a VP of Food Network told my class the same thing. It seems crazy that the world is so small, so connected. People hire people they know and like, and if you don't know anyone it will be hard to get hired. I don't know anyone.
Sure, I've done my best to network. I try to talk to guest speakers after they come to my classes, but I still feel like I'm miles behind everyone else. Other people I know reach out to random people and ask for coffee chats. That just seems so weird. Why would a random person want to interrupt their day and get coffee to talk with me? I don't think I would want to have coffee with a random college kid if I was a working professional ...And yet this awkward networking seems to be the only way to get somewhere in this world. People only talk to people to get something out of them, and that sucks.
My ounce of hope lies in the fact that everyone says you only need to get started. Once you've got one good job you can start forming the relationships with people at that job who will help you move onwards. Maybe I'll get lucky somehow. Maybe someone in the Entertainment industry will be searching how to make sweet tea and will accidentally come across my blog and give me that chance.
All I can do is hope, right?
P.S. Completely unrelated but don't want to create a whole new post about it.
I've noticed that I only use the left shift key on my keyboard. For all the years I've been typing I missed out on the whole right shift key, and I never even noticed it. I wonder if I could type faster if I taught myself to use both shift keys. They're certainly there for a reason. I pride myself on typing reasonably fast, so maybe I should refine my keyboarding. However, I've been typing this way as long as I can remember, so it might be nearly impossible to retrain my brain.
