Just showing up…

Dr. Joseph Barber

I’m reading the book “Improv Wisdom” by Patricia Madson right now, as the art of improvisation has been mentioned in a couple of conferences I have attended involving graduate student and postdoc career advisors from a broad diversity of academic institutions. You can see one article on this mentioned here in the Carpe Careers blog. I’m only half way through the book, so I cannot give an overall review of the contents, but there are certainly topics that have been mentioned that are relevant to any career exploration or application process. One of the most important so far has included the idea of just showing up…, as the simple alternative to, well…, errr…, not showing up. Let’s explore this in some more detail.

How many times have you dreaded an event or experience (and I am talking about that gut-wrenching, sleep-deprived state of absolute fear), only to find that the actual event was really not that bad at all? How many times have you dreaded an event so much that you found an excuse not to participate? Our imagination of what might happen often obscures what actually happens. We see the world through the lens of our internal perspective (that bizarre and terrifying world generated by our brains), rather than seeing it for what it really is. Don’t get me wrong, there are some experiences we dread that turn out to be pretty dreadful, but the real-life experience is still usually different in substantive ways from our imagined one. The idea of just turning up is about making sure we put ourselves in a position where we can actually respond to the real-life world in a more optimistic and confident manner. We may have to be ready to adapt to that world, but chances are that we will come away enhanced or improved by the experience in some way.

Take networking events as an example. If you are like me, then I probably know what you are thinking about right now having read those words. Are you picturing those super-scary speed-networking type events, or the events where people all around seem to be making super-intense business deals worth billions of dollars? Well, that’s your imagination being particularly unhelpful. Networking doesn’t have to be anything like this. When I talk about networking when I am advising students and postdocs, the actual type of experience I am referring to is about as unscary as it can be. I am mostly talking about events where there are people you don’t really know gathered together in the same place and at the same time to chat about something you are interested in. Yes, so no man-eating snakes, no mutant viral outbreaks, nothing like this. A visiting speaker might come to campus to talk about their research or their career outside of academia. If you attend, you might find yourself sitting in a room full of people who by their very presence share similar interests to you, and who could become new contacts, collaborators, or friends if you introduced yourself. There is even an opportunity you might get your specific question answered by the speaker, if you ask one, and a chance for you to follow-up with the speaker after the event to chat…, which gives you even more of an excuse to follow-up days later to chat some more. Of course, if you don’t turn up, don’t open your mouth to talk, and don’t take a chance, then none of these things will happen – without a doubt. Just showing up can potentially lead to a chain reaction of experiences and interactions occurring that might be incredibly helpful to you or those you meet.

So, whenever your brain tries to intimidate you, to convince you that attending some professional development event is a bad, bad idea (based on the imagined possibility of pirate zombie invasions and the like), tune these negative thoughts out and just show up. After all, you can always leave an event if it isn’t right for you – but you can’t travel back in time to have the opportunity to attend an event you already missed.

Author: Joseph

Joseph Barber is a Senior Associate Director at Career Services serving graduate students and postdocs. He has a PhD in animal behaviour and animal welfare, and continues to teach these subjects as an adjunct professor at Hunter College (CUNY).