Networking

As a Turkish student I heard some faculty members who teach here. I am an ECE major so one of the members I wanted to meet was Prof. Erhan Kudeki. There was an ECE mentoring session and I first saw him there. Now that I knew what he looked like, I realized the only thing I had to do was to go talk to him.

I went into the Everitt Lab and found his office. I knocked the door and it was locked. I knocked a couple of times more just in case then a lady opened the door. I told her I wanted to see Prof Kudeki she asked me if I had any appointment I said no then he came up and I introduced myself saying  I am a student from Turkey and I simply wanted to introduce myself.

He was very friendly and invited me to his office. We talked generally about Turkey, Illinois and engineering in Illinois. I asked him about the undergraduate research projects and he mentioned me PURE program. That was very helpful and in fact and information I didn’t receive from anyone else then.

The interesting thing happened 1 week after that. I received an email from Prof Kudeki introducing me the other Turkish students in ECE department. Apparently there was a student who wanted to initiate a Turkish Student Association. If I didn’t introduce myself to Prof Kudeki I wouldn’t hear about that.

This incident proved the importance of networking and taking initiative. I was wondering why those two terms were discussed one after the other in the reading assignment but now I understand that building a network demands initiative. I am happy that the person I contacted helped me expand my network. Now I know more people who would contact me but this also brings responsibility because now those people have expectations from me since they hear my name from Prof Kudeki.