When I hear that term, as I imagine is true for many of you, I get this image of desperate people in suits--I guess many of us who have gone on the job market can picture precisely such a conference--trying to climb up the ladder by meeting the right person at the right time. Academia is certainly not immune to the potent mixture of anxiety and ambition that leads people to think of networking in this way. Academics have ambition, and there are probably few careers that generate as much anxiety as this one, with its constant search for the next goal (completion of a PhD, publishing, securing of a job, publishing, working toward tenure if you're on the tenure track, promotion through our very limited number of ranks, publishing, etc.). Networking has always struck me as a distinctly negative, self-serving social activity, and I just can't shake that terminological association. As one of the leaders of a three-day workshop I just attended said several times, a belief our field holds dear, words gain their meaning from other words.
If I think networking has these sleazy, uncomfortable, awkward, selfish associations, why use it? Okay, fine. It's not really the term I have in mind. When I go to conferences, I go to meet new people and see old friends and colleagues. I go to be a participant in my professional community. There is a term that resonates with me: community.
In the grand scheme of things, I have only been going to conferences for a few years now. I was in the second year of my PhD program before I attended a national conference. But in that short time, I have made numerous acquaintances in my field, acquaintances that I find a lot of value in. I don't value them because I think they helped me get a job (although I'm sure they did) or because they are the biggest, most famousest names in my field (although I do know some of them). When I talk with someone I have met at a conference, either five years or five seconds ago, I feel the privilege of talking with someone who has read much of the same scholarship I have read, who has gone through similar kinds of education, who has faced similar challenges that I face as a scholar, teacher, and administrator. And the reward of networking (ugh, that term) is not some future material gain or points scored in some intangible, invisible game of prestige building. The reward is feeling that sense of community.
A small example: When I began composing those post, as I said above, I was sitting in the hotel lobby all on my lonesome. I was engaging in a little bit of people watching and saying hi to people I knew when they walked past, but I was really just working. A paragraph into this post about the importance of networking, a colleague I met at this conference five years ago put her own work down, crossed the lobby, and asked me to join her and another colleague because, even though we are all working quietly, we can at least work together.
I never feel more connected to my community than when I'm at this conference. What we do is absolutely networking. You meet a person who introduces you to another person. Or, as happened to me this morning, you meet a person you realize you sort of know because of another person--an accidental form of networking. Or you just sit beside a person and talk about coffee. Networking can be an organic process: a putting down of roots, a rhizomatic experience. So those of you who don't like conferences because you don't like networking, just remember that you're talking with people who share so many of your values. You're talking to your people.
Okay, that's enough positivity. Blame it on my being on the road at my favorite conference. It gives me "all the feels," as the kids say. Next time, I promise to find some darkness to speak to so you know it's still me. Better yet: Maybe I'll invite my mysterious colleague Doctor Pretentious to be a guest blogger. Now that's darkness.
(The first photo, Suzie's Bridge, was taken at Ephiphany Farm in Bloomington, Illinois. The second photo was taken at the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana.)
