Networking

            My experience expanding my network involved talking with my math professor.  I am in a class called fundamental mathematics which is a course outside of the normal engineering requirements because I am aiming at getting a math minor.  Going into this class, I was pretty nervous because I am not particularly good at proofs – the main focus of this class.  One week, I had some homework questions and I decided to ask Professor D’Angelo, who was our teacher and author of our textbook, for some clarification.  After class, after I asked my first question, we got into a philosophical discussion about the application of mathematics.  He started talking about the reason the specific question was in the textbook.  He told me about his experience in Europe and how a reporter there had tried to convert the change in temperature in Celsius to Fahrenheit.  The reporter had just looked up the value of the change in Celsius and converted it directly to Fahrenheit and the paper had read that the temperature rose “68 degrees Fahrenheit” in one day which is ridiculous but was a mistake made in a major newspaper nevertheless.  My professor’s point was that sometimes even the little things need careful attention because it is easy to get confused and when you move to tougher problems, the little details need to be set in stone.

            We moved on to some of my other homework questions and even though we got off track it was great talking to a man who had such enthusiasm for his subject.  He told me about his motivations for writing the textbook and how this class has really been a culmination of his lifetime’s work.  It really gave me a new excitement for being in the class because now I viewed every problem differently.  They weren’t just yucky proofs anymore, they were puzzles waiting to be solved.  My math teacher and I talked for a very long time and I was glad that I had a chance to speak with him.  He even told me that based on the homework I had already done, if I continued to do well in the class he could write future recommendations for me to get into honors level math classes.  It made the class seem smaller and more friendly and every time he passed out papers and he knew my name it made me feel like I was more at home in this difficult strange math class.

This conversation and the future conversations to come with my math teacher make me more confident and also have helped my networking.  Although this is just a little step in this direction, I can relate it to the “How to be a star at work” article by Keller.  In a work or college environment, it is not enough to just sit back, do your work, and hope people notice you.  It really pays off to talk to the right people and be friendly and not be greedy with your time.  I could have been doing many other things during those 45 minutes talking with my professor but it was important to get to know him and not be anxious to go do my own thing.  Overall, this conversation is the start to a relationship and networking connection that I need to continue in the future.