Day 11 of Classes

 This post is a little late - but I have a solid reason.

Most of these, so far, answer a prompt for one of the courses I am currently enrolled in. This prompt asks about positionality and networking. My brief comment on positionality - writing about that is easy for me. I write personal reflection regularly, so putting it in the form of a statement regarding my research topic did not cause anxiety or stress on my part.

Networking, though.

Here are my reasons for delaying this post:

1. As an introvert and almost certainly neurodiverse person, I despise networking.
2. Networking events tend to exhaust me, so a little distance makes writing about them easier and results in a piece with less bias.
3. I had another networking event on the horizon - the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) conference.

The event with only the students and professors of the doctoral program was okay. I was lucky to be seated on the edge of everything, rather in the middle of everyone talking, which makes a significant difference when it comes to noise. I did learn from the event that a recent doctoral student in the program wrote a dissertation similar to what I intend. This valuable piece of information will lead me to sources I can use.

The much more difficult networking event was NCTE. I usually avoid conferences - the sound, the people, the food, the lights, my chronic pain. (Seriously, I know it was Tom Hanks speaking, but did the ballroom really need to feel like a rock concert beforehand? I was already excited to see and hear him; there was no need to amp it up.) With all the reasons I find conferences anywhere from uncomfortable to downright distressing, I only go if I have a really good reason - like a presentation I am giving, in this case a roundtable on "Reading and Writing for Social Change."

I enjoy the sessions where I can sit in a smallish room and learn, discuss, engage in some activity. I enjoy getting a chance to talk with colleagues and friends I do not see often. For this conference, I got to see my sibling, who only lives 90 minutes from the venue, which was one of the highlights of this conference. While these things are wonderful, they generally are not reason enough to get on a plane, stay in a hotel, and attend the conference - and pay for all of it (or most, as sometimes my institution covers part of this cost).

Last weekend, though, I ended up accidentally networking, which is the best kind.

Somehow I ended up in a room with several people in leadership roles for NCTE (I was not the only non-leader there). They included me in the discussion, part of which was introductions with what we do professionally. This meant I ended up telling them about my research with the goal of creating federal legislation to protect and support LGBTQ+ students.

And one of the people in the room happens to be an editor for a journal which publishes LGBTQ+ related research.

When I was young, one of my favorite words was serendipity - in part because the first syllable has the same pronunciation as my name. It remains one of my favorites, but more for the concept than the morphology. The unlooked for treasure. Serendipitous moments stand out in my mind, like the one I experienced at NCTE.

One of other favorites is synergy, that idea that the combination of things creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. I find that it often goes hand-in-hand with serendipity.

I did not attend NCTE looking to network. I planned to meet some author, listen to some amazing speakers, spend time with cool people, check out the exhibit hall, but not network. Networking, though it is a primary element of conferences like this, was not among my expectations. I had no intention of putting myself out there and talking to a bunch of people I don't know. My introversion and anxiety make the idea horrid.

But then I end up doing it anyway. Serendipity and Synergy.

It's the only way I ever network.