Seeing Is Believing

I was talking to my sister recently about adjusting to life in another city—most importantly, meeting people. My sister relocated to Seattle about the same time that I came back to Madison. She moved there after she got married and somehow settled into her husband’s life. His friends became her friends and she was OK with that. For a while.

Once she started working, she figured she’d meet more people and build her circle of friends that way. But what my sister is struggling the most with is taking that next step in settling down. She has a job, she’s met a couple of people at work, but in her industry everyone is older. Like me, she’s a young professional in a new city, and I’ve tried explaining to her how now we need to take that time in building our networks—professionally and socially.

Luckily in Madison there are some great organizations that help young professionals adjust. They’ve definitely helped me along the way. Take MAGNET, for example. The YP networking organization holds multiple events every month, and the nice thing is that they’re not industry-specific and there’s lots of different ways to plug in. There are social gatherings, public policy sessions, community service opportunities and more. And if you don’t find something you like through MAGNET, the group is always looking for great ideas. So far, I’ve had only good experiences there.

This might sound strange, but what I like most about MAGNET is seeing with my own two eyes that I’m not the only one out there. I have no idea why I keep thinking my generation is all in hiding somewhere, but every time I go to a MAGNET event I’m reminded that there are a lot of people out there just like me. And it’s nice to see people with similar goals and interests in one place.

So that’s what I told my sister. Seattle’s been rated as one of the top cities for young professionals, so I’m pretty sure all she has to do is make the conscious effort to try to find them.
It’s making that first step that’s the hardest and most difficult. After that, everything else sort of falls into place.