HOW TO NETWORK

This event got me out of my comfort zone, but in a good way. I was in a group of about 25 other students at uni, where a majority of them I had never crossed paths with before. To start off with we were put into pairs and we were told to label one person A, and the other person B. All the A's had to say out loud any perceptions or thoughts they had about the other person. All the B's had to sit there in silence and not react at all to the person making the assumptions about them.

I felt quite uncomfortable during this task because it felt strange to have someone assume things about you when you don't even know them and also it felt wrong to make assumptions about people based on how they look. However, it taught me a lesson that people will make assumptions about you on first impressions no matter what, you just have to be ready to present the best version of you to clients and employers.

We then had get into pairs and introduce ourselves to someone new, and then after that match up with another pair and introduce your partner to the other pair. This activity was all about actively listening, making sure that I can retain the short term information about people, this is an important skills when networking because people are more drawn to you when you remember the little things about them.

Afterwards we got into a different group of four and we had a sheet with four different options. They said: "Very Urgent and Very Important" "Not Urgent and Very Important" "Very Urgent and Not Important" or "Not Urgent and Not Important". We then had different scenarios that could happen at a networking event and had to figure out where we would put each scenario. Some of the examples were:

• Going to the toilet

• Getting a phone call from a family member

• Talking about an assignment that is due tomorrow

• Introducing yourself to some friends

• Talking to a stranger

There were a fair few more but we had quite a discussion about some of the scenarios and how the context can change how important each one is. For example in my group one girl said that she would probably ignore the phone call from a family member because it might just be her mum asking what she had for dinner, whereas one guy in my group said that he would definitely answer the phone, because his family only communicate through messages, if he gets a phone call he knows that something is wrong.

For the final task about 25 more students joined us and we had to just basically talk to as many people as we could in 20 minutes. I actually quite enjoyed this part even though talking with strangers is a weak point for me, I found that the more I did it the easier it got. I found ways of exiting conversations that didn't spark much interest in me and got details from people that I wanted to connect with too.