Tufts grad student and fellow Nature blogger Sohini Mazumdar is generating a buzz with her Posts two buzzwords – “mentoring” and “networking.”
…(I)t’s hard when you don’t know where to start. Either you end up sounding like this overeager person, self promoting, obnoxious person (I met one of those recently) or you’re standing in a corner being awkward (I’ve done this before). The circles have already been formed; people who know each other are already networking. What do you do?
For a person like me, who is not this effervescent, dominate the room, extrovert, the key is to go to multiple events
The responses came in for California, Maryland and elsewhere.
Post doc Jane de Lartigue of UC Davis endorses social networks:
..I definitely struggled to get to grips with Twitter myself at first, I just didn’t get it, but it’s totally taken over my life….not only do you get to ‘meet’ really interesting new people, you get into fantastic discussions, learn about possible job opportunities, and read fabulous blogs and articles. I would definitely recommend it, it becomes easily addictive, but I don’t feel so bad about it since it’s helping me to network. I feel the same way about LinkedIn for job resources.
Check out Sohini’s post on mentors as well.
Bottom line: It’s amazing what you will find, if you look. You want as many allies as you can get.