What is your best advice for meeting new people at networking events?

As a student or professional, these days we are constantly selling ourselves when we go to networking events and online. Whatever your purpose, you are going there to make a positive impression and connect with people. When meeting someone new, you introduce yourself and describe what you do. This is your chance to set a first impression and leave an impact on the other person. It is a time to celebrate yourself, to speak up about the contribution you’re making to the planet. Trust me, positivity makes a difference!

“What are your plans for life after graduation?”

As a student about to leave the school walls and enter the professional world, your obvious answer would be: “Get a job in the field that I studied.”

Life doesn’t go as planned.

During your studies, I bet you never envisioned for yourself that you’d have to move back in with your parents, be struggling financially and/or in serious debt, and couldn’t find a job that requires a degree. After spending countless hours of classwork, extracurricular activities, and paid work, not to mention the yearly tuition to earn your degree, you’ve no guarantee of a job. Sadly, for many graduates today, their dreams for life after higher education turn into this reality.

What does it mean to be alive? This was a question one of my grandmothers asked me recently after we were reflecting on just how precious life is. Why does it take death or the process of losing someone dear to you to realize what truly matters in life?

You could be in a place thinking there is no clear pattern to your career and you are looking for direction. Sometimes it takes you doing what you don’t like or seeing the world from a different lens to actually realize what your gift is in this world and what your purpose is on earth.

On the airplane home after an inspiring trip with family and friends, I couldn’t help but reflect on how valuable life is and the mark I want to leave on this world.