Unlike many of my crazy amazing and confident peers, I do not enjoy the networking scene and am a total mess at it. Even when I am a huge fan of the person in question and just want them to know that I think they are fantastic humans, I quickly lose all sense of confidence and ability to string words together when it finally hits my turn to speak to them. It really is an awful fish-on-dry-land type of scene that I’m glad only a few have had to witness. Unfortunately networking and building a support system is incredibly important for trying to start a career and not being able to tell someone they are lit as shit just seems like a waste as well. Knowing this, I went into this trip with the mission to get better at it and, for better or worse, put myself out there and see what could happen. Thank god this experiment went better than planned and I am (slowly) starting to understand how to connect with strangers that inspire me. This is largely due the unbelievably generous professionals that I met on this trip. I got to meet people that were not only willing to talk to me through my rough starts to conversations but who legitimately took an interest in me as an individual and tried to help me out with more networking points of contact and personal advice. Being a very introverted person and the first college grad now having to navigate the corporate world in a completely different way than my family has, this kindness and support meant everything. I’m not only getting the confidence to send out thank you cards and connecting over social networks but I now have a piece of comfort in these situations (and myself) that I never had before.

- Olivia A