Now entering Network-City

By Jenn, PhD Student in English

A good adviser is hard to find.  Lucky for me, I stumbled upon my then MA adviser (now PhD) when I enrolled in one of his courses. One of the first things he advised us to do in that course was to join professional organizations, setting me on the path toward realizing how to network and be a professional.

Networking is key to becoming a professional in your field.  Professionalization isn’t just belonging to organizations or meeting members; it’s learning to be a member of a greater community.  Your field is your community, and the ways you get there are through learning to speak like your community, participating in community events, and getting to know the community members.  And networking can be one of the first steps you take toward taking on your identity as a professional.

You can think of your strategies for networking as working on several levels.  Your first level is your department: get to know your fellow graduate students and professors.  Find the ones who share your research interests, and who might be possible collaborators on projects or mentors.  I have several fellow graduate students who I discuss teaching and research with, and who are also my friends.  My advisory committee (and future dissertation committee) came together because I took classes and interacted with my professors, discovering who I shared interests with and who would be good to work with and be supportive.

The next level is the larger university campus.  It’s remarkably easy to never leave our own departments, but often connecting with other graduate students in other departments can lead to friendships, productive collaborations, and greater professionalization.  It’s through my conversations with graduate students and professors across campus that I have forged relationships and pursued possible research opportunities.  By being involved in graduate student activities, I have been able to get to know graduate students and professors from all disciplines—and have had lots of great conversations.  Better yet, I’ve felt like I was part of the University community.

The next level of networking is within your larger field. This is why it’s important to belong to your relevant professional organizations.  I maintain membership in several.  Membership for graduate students is cheap, and often you can get publications at a steep discount.  Being a member allows you to know when the conventions are—and these professional meetings are the final level of networking.

At conferences/conventions, you get to meet the major figures in your field.  You find mentors, people interested in your same research, friends, potential future colleagues. You get the chance to listen to interesting papers and get a sense of what’s going on in the scholarship of your field—perhaps finding potential directions or ideas for your own work. You also get to present and get feedback on your work.

In addition to listening to papers, be sure to attend the social functions at conferences to continue networking.  While it can be intimidating to introduce yourself to people, it pays off.  The last two conferences I attended, I had the pleasure of meeting (and presenting with!) a major theorist in my field, who gave me an idea to extend my own theories in an interesting direction.  I also met someone whose work I admire a great deal and is a potential outside reader for my dissertation.  I also made friends with other graduate students and had a great time.  Networking doesn’t just have to be about listening to ideas—it can be fun and social as well.

I want to stress something important: you can attend your classes and do your research, but if you’re not out networking, you’re not doing everything you can do to succeed.  I’m able to share this advice with you because of the networking I’ve done—networking opens up opportunities and allows you to fully participate as a professional in your field, to take on a professional identity, and to become a member of your academic community.  Networking may seem like a hassle at times, but you never know when you might meet a future collaborator, mentor…or even co-worker.  So I encourage you to take advantage of any and all opportunities to form relationships with those around you on all levels of the academy.

Jenn is a 3^rd year PhD student in English, specializing in Rhetoric and Composition.  She currently teaches writing and tutors in addition to working on her research.  Her research interests are in composition pedagogy, rhetoric of science, feminist composition, and language.  In short moments of her spare time, she runs and knits and bakes, but not all at once.