Well, dear readers, life gets in the way again. Or, life sidetracks. I have had this post about Meeting People in my Idea Bank for months, and was inspired to write it this week by a really great fleeting romantic encounter involving one of my friends... But then tonight happened and I have to switch tack. Keep an eye out for the Romantic Encounters post in the near future, though. (Also, I have been trying for years now -- plural! -- to get someone to write a guest post about online dating and for the life of me I can't get anyone to write it! So, dear readers, if any of you would like to take a stab at it I will love you forever.
...Speaking of romantic encounters.)
On to my story for this evening.
A week or two ago, I saw a Facebook post from an old family friend from the Upstate New York days, the mother of a girl I studied abroad with in high school saying she was going to be working at Winterthur for a few days. I commented that Winterthur happens to be just a few minutes up the road from where I am currently situated, and she messaged me right away and gave me her phone number and said she would love to meet up while she is in town.
So after work today she met my mom and me at Nirvana, an Indian restaurant in Independence Mall (fitting, since the circumstance of our meeting was the study abroad program in India).
Sidenote: Positive dining experience at Nirvana. We had a lovely combination of dishes: chicken madras, dal bukhara, and malai kofta with rice and raita; also the veg pakora were delicious. I would say it's on the underspiced side, especially compared to the fiery Maharaja Palace in Newark. The decor was also nice, and we got some joy out of the music. In the two hours we were there, I think there were only two other tables so it was pretty quiet on a Wednesday night. And now, back to the main event.
It was fabulous, to catch up after what has easily been seven or eight years, to share and to hear what we have all been up to, and to get a fresh perspective on things from what feels like another time and place. You know that feeling of introducing a high school friend to a college friend, like two versions of yourself are sliding together at least for a moment? Or the feeling of explaining a current situation to someone you knew very well in middle school, as if they can tell you how your middle school self would react to what is happening now, and reveal some sort of truth or wisdom you have since lost sight of? It's affirming.
Meeting up with this friend was also an opportunity to share updates on the lives of mutual friends, particularly a lot of the girls I went to school with on this program. That part was a little sad to me, because I have done a terrible job of staying in touch with most of them, and have mostly watched from afar as they all graduated together and visited each other around the world and traveled together. I will say that I am inspired now to drop a few notes to say hi and I hope you are well. Because I do. This is something I have never quite come to terms with: how can I ever express how often I think of people that have crossed my path throughout my life, and how important they are to me even if I have nothing really to say to them at this point in my life. I don't know. Staying in touch is a bit foreign to me. But I think I'm getting at least a little better at it over time.
I have, in fact, been in touch with at least one of these mutual friends in the past week or two, and I have been very happy to exchange a few words (and snapchats) with her.
Also in the last week I have exchanged messages with two really important people from my college days. And I've written some letters too. And all of these exchanges mean more to me than I can even comprehend or explain to myself.
So this all brings me to something I think about on a pretty regular basis, being a contributing member of society and spending so much of my time engaging with the working world: networking.
It's like a dirty word. It's what you have to do if you want career success. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The general feeling about it is reluctant and everybody has anxiety about it and to be honest I always associate the word with slimy and/or pretentious behavior and, at the very least, some fibbing and embellishment.
Which is really sort of silly, because I actually "network" all the time and I do legitimately enjoy making interesting connections with people. I like staying in touch with old friends who are doing interesting things; I like meeting new people who are doing interesting things and talking to them about it, and catching up with them later to find out what has changed and how the whole thing is going.
I met this woman on the plane coming back from MSP two weeks ago, who is an organizational change officer for her company. That means she travels around helping different branches of the company transition smoothly into using new systems and incorporating new policies into their basic operations, and making sure everybody is on board with what's going on. She talked a lot about the "people side of change."
I loved that! I wanted to ask about a billion questions, and I wanted to know how things turned out for her in the latest round of changes, and I wanted to talk to her about the impact of social media on organizational change and about the perspectives she gained from her studies in communications, in the context of what she was doing for work. I almost asked her if she had a card, or for some contact information, but I liked her so much I didn't want her to think I was being opportunistic, so I didn't ask. And I have been kicking myself ever since.
And I really think the reason I didn't ask is because that is a pretty standard "networking" technique and it seems opportunistic and not genuine and like just what I'm supposed to do. (We all know how I feel about things I'm just supposed to do.)
That may be more of a side effect of my stubborn beat-of-my-own-drum attitudes than the social stigma of networking, but I still think it's worth mentioning. Why can't I just think someone is cool and maybe want to talk to them about work, especially if we both like what we do and can inform each other's perspectives, without having it tainted by the veneer of corporate traditions? And why does something so pure, like an interesting conversation or a potential future friend or mentor or colleague, have to be cheapened by a term that carries so much weight of self-interest and personal gain?
I would love to hear other thoughts about the whole networking thing; I am pretty open to the idea that my resistance could easily be a byproduct of nervousness about putting myself out there, but I have always felt the whole "you have to do this to be successful" dialogue to cheapen connections between people that might otherwise be effortless and mutually enriching.
And to bring it back around to my original thought: I love catching up with you, classmates, friends, relatives and other readers. If I get around to sending you a personal message, it means I'm thinking about you and that I think you are probably doing something interesting and that I have respect and admiration and fond memories of you.
And if I don't get around to actually sending a message... I'm probably still thinking a lot of those same things.
Be well, readers; and be real.
...Speaking of romantic encounters.)
On to my story for this evening.
A week or two ago, I saw a Facebook post from an old family friend from the Upstate New York days, the mother of a girl I studied abroad with in high school saying she was going to be working at Winterthur for a few days. I commented that Winterthur happens to be just a few minutes up the road from where I am currently situated, and she messaged me right away and gave me her phone number and said she would love to meet up while she is in town.
So after work today she met my mom and me at Nirvana, an Indian restaurant in Independence Mall (fitting, since the circumstance of our meeting was the study abroad program in India).
Sidenote: Positive dining experience at Nirvana. We had a lovely combination of dishes: chicken madras, dal bukhara, and malai kofta with rice and raita; also the veg pakora were delicious. I would say it's on the underspiced side, especially compared to the fiery Maharaja Palace in Newark. The decor was also nice, and we got some joy out of the music. In the two hours we were there, I think there were only two other tables so it was pretty quiet on a Wednesday night. And now, back to the main event.
It was fabulous, to catch up after what has easily been seven or eight years, to share and to hear what we have all been up to, and to get a fresh perspective on things from what feels like another time and place. You know that feeling of introducing a high school friend to a college friend, like two versions of yourself are sliding together at least for a moment? Or the feeling of explaining a current situation to someone you knew very well in middle school, as if they can tell you how your middle school self would react to what is happening now, and reveal some sort of truth or wisdom you have since lost sight of? It's affirming.
Meeting up with this friend was also an opportunity to share updates on the lives of mutual friends, particularly a lot of the girls I went to school with on this program. That part was a little sad to me, because I have done a terrible job of staying in touch with most of them, and have mostly watched from afar as they all graduated together and visited each other around the world and traveled together. I will say that I am inspired now to drop a few notes to say hi and I hope you are well. Because I do. This is something I have never quite come to terms with: how can I ever express how often I think of people that have crossed my path throughout my life, and how important they are to me even if I have nothing really to say to them at this point in my life. I don't know. Staying in touch is a bit foreign to me. But I think I'm getting at least a little better at it over time.
I have, in fact, been in touch with at least one of these mutual friends in the past week or two, and I have been very happy to exchange a few words (and snapchats) with her.
Also in the last week I have exchanged messages with two really important people from my college days. And I've written some letters too. And all of these exchanges mean more to me than I can even comprehend or explain to myself.
So this all brings me to something I think about on a pretty regular basis, being a contributing member of society and spending so much of my time engaging with the working world: networking.
It's like a dirty word. It's what you have to do if you want career success. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The general feeling about it is reluctant and everybody has anxiety about it and to be honest I always associate the word with slimy and/or pretentious behavior and, at the very least, some fibbing and embellishment.
Which is really sort of silly, because I actually "network" all the time and I do legitimately enjoy making interesting connections with people. I like staying in touch with old friends who are doing interesting things; I like meeting new people who are doing interesting things and talking to them about it, and catching up with them later to find out what has changed and how the whole thing is going.
I met this woman on the plane coming back from MSP two weeks ago, who is an organizational change officer for her company. That means she travels around helping different branches of the company transition smoothly into using new systems and incorporating new policies into their basic operations, and making sure everybody is on board with what's going on. She talked a lot about the "people side of change."
I loved that! I wanted to ask about a billion questions, and I wanted to know how things turned out for her in the latest round of changes, and I wanted to talk to her about the impact of social media on organizational change and about the perspectives she gained from her studies in communications, in the context of what she was doing for work. I almost asked her if she had a card, or for some contact information, but I liked her so much I didn't want her to think I was being opportunistic, so I didn't ask. And I have been kicking myself ever since.
And I really think the reason I didn't ask is because that is a pretty standard "networking" technique and it seems opportunistic and not genuine and like just what I'm supposed to do. (We all know how I feel about things I'm just supposed to do.)
That may be more of a side effect of my stubborn beat-of-my-own-drum attitudes than the social stigma of networking, but I still think it's worth mentioning. Why can't I just think someone is cool and maybe want to talk to them about work, especially if we both like what we do and can inform each other's perspectives, without having it tainted by the veneer of corporate traditions? And why does something so pure, like an interesting conversation or a potential future friend or mentor or colleague, have to be cheapened by a term that carries so much weight of self-interest and personal gain?
I would love to hear other thoughts about the whole networking thing; I am pretty open to the idea that my resistance could easily be a byproduct of nervousness about putting myself out there, but I have always felt the whole "you have to do this to be successful" dialogue to cheapen connections between people that might otherwise be effortless and mutually enriching.
And to bring it back around to my original thought: I love catching up with you, classmates, friends, relatives and other readers. If I get around to sending you a personal message, it means I'm thinking about you and that I think you are probably doing something interesting and that I have respect and admiration and fond memories of you.
And if I don't get around to actually sending a message... I'm probably still thinking a lot of those same things.
Be well, readers; and be real.
posted from Bloggeroid
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