Networking is very important as an engineer. Knowing “the right people” is the main part of networking. Certainly anybody can just have several friends, but when it becomes to a business standpoint, you need to know the right people. Working with others is a key component of engineering as we already know. In this class, we are stressing “The Missing Basics.” These skills will be used by us in the future to work with other people, in our network.
Almost everyday provides a chance to take initiative and network with others. Whether it is meeting someone new on the bus, or sending an e-mail to your professor, we can all take steps to network with others. I feel that a strong part of networking is keeping the relationships you build. You don’t want to meet a person to simply join together on one project and leave them. I think keeping relationships and not “burning bridges” of past ones is very important in creating a successful network.
In this assignment, I did take the initiative to network. I had an issue with the online homework system for my Microeconomics class because I changed discussion section. At first, I was uncertain as to whether or not my new section teacher was receiving my grades. I could have simply assumed that she was, but it could have led to catastrophic results later down the road. I decided to e-mail my section teacher. We exchanged multiple e-mails trying to solve the problem. After we failed to find a solution, I contacted the support personnel with the online program. We had a live instant messaging chat for about half an hour, and finally, changed my discussion section.
I believe that this has helped me build networking skills. I held back any frustration that I built up during the tedious process of changing one little bubble on the form that selected my discussion section. I learned how to work with different people, and I now have a better relationship with my discussion teacher in case I have any farther issues of the same sort, or with course materials. This little taste of networking has helped me to gain a little more experience in collaborating with others.
Although very simple,things like this ultimately can spark much more complex relationships with people (your TA in this case). The next step, in my opinion, would be forming these relationships from scratch (ie not being forced to talk because of a class problem). Are there any other people that it would benefit you to talk to? I think making a "who to talk to" list would definitely be an interesting idea. That way you would atleast have them written down and therefore you would more likely talk to them (horrible sentence right there but too lazy to reword it).
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ReplyDeleteLike they say, "It's not what you know, it's who you know".... Haha also nice job on incorporating Missing Basics into this post! It's hard to teach people exactly how to network, yet it is equally important in getting an internship/job/etc. Have you followed up your email recently with any more attempts to get to know your TA?
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