February 24, 2026
Last week SMPA held its first-ever career readiness event. It started Thursday with a conversation with our Terker Fellows, Liz Kelly Nelson and Joe Pounder. On Friday, we held smaller sessions with our Terkers, alumni, faculty, and members of our National Council. The event ended with a panel of recent alumni and moderated by SMPA junior Avanti Patwardhan.
Two important themes emerged in the conversations: curiosity and relationships. No matter your field or interests, no matter what’s happening with technology, politics, or the economy, two constants are the importance of learning new things and surrounding yourself with interesting people.
Some of what you learn should be tied to your career. Learn what the person whose job you want next does every day. Learn new software or techniques. But also learn because it’s fun and makes you a more complete person. Fall down Reddit or Google rabbit holes. Learn about surrealism, the maybe (or maybe not) extinct ivory-billed woodpecker, or how to make origami. The world has endless intellectual alleys, wander around them.
A great way to keep learning is to surround yourself with interesting people. Be interested in them, what they do, how they navigate the world, and the last Reddit trail they followed a bit further than they probably should have. Find your fellow travellers and travel with them. This is your network. Networking isn’t handing out ten business cards, eating seven cheese cubes, and having three follow up coffees. Networking being someone worth talking to, meeting interesting people, and talking to them.
The people with whom you connect today will be your network for the rest of your careers. You will hire and be hired by each other, cover and be covered by each other, and otherwise find ways to help each other succeed. You will also go on vacation together, support each other after tough break ups, and go to each others’ weddings. Your friends, the people worth talking to, are your network. So talk to them and be someone worth talking to. Be curious, ask, listen, learn, and have something to offer to the conversation. Be someone others want to sit in meetings with, go on vacations with, call when life is tough, can count on when challenges are hard, and who isn’t afraid to challenge themselves to learn new things.
Life isn’t a series of quizzes and transactions, and neither are your careers. Your career, like your life, is a bunch of people doing the best they can with, and for, each other.
Apply for jobs, keep hustling, keep doing the things you do that got you here. You need to do that to succeed professionally. But more importantly be a good, interesting person others can count on.