Networking is touted as the best resource for professional success and personal growth. Whether you are looking for a job, professional development, business opportunities or shared-interest socializing, networking is said to be the key. But like any other key, it doesn’t work unless it clicks.

What clicks for an intellectually curious introvert like me are organized interactions that engage through knowledge (real problem solving) and sincerity. In other words, if you want to engage me, your pitch must make sense. You can’t sell me dog food if I don’t have a dog.

When I first ventured into business networking, I felt like I was trying to light a wet match in a dark cave, because the journey was filled with some frustrations. While I did meet sincere people who genuinely supported me and vice-versa, I wasn’t prepared for:

• Aggressive people who push their product/services within 90 seconds of first contact and offer evasive answers beyond their elevator pitch. They demand your immediate trust and business card and tell you they will call you soon about their product. To aggressors, you don’t need a dog to buy dog food; you need to start with the food because that’s what they’ve got.
• “Back to me” people who try too hard to be interesting without being interested in anyone else. They talk excessively about themselves without listening to anyone else, because they are fascinating to know so you need to get onboard. They brag about numbers—the number of events they attend, the number of things they do and the number of people they know. Backers never ask if you have a dog; they just start spamming you about their dog food.
• “Weary networkers” who are over the networking scene because they are meeting the same people most of the time. They recognize the value of networking, but have reached their peak; they can’t stop coming because they need to look interested for business purposes. They can tell you about numerous networking events and can accurately predict who will attend. If they hear another dog food elevator pitch, they may howl.

After attending several events, it started looking like the same tune with a different singer. Most events offered the same format, information and people. Some of them try different approaches to remove the weariness, the aggressiveness and the connection collectors, but the organizers soon learn that initially attracting people is far easier than retaining them. Some find innovative ways to encourage retention; others continue to look for the answers at the back of the book by sticking to traditional topics without soliciting attendees’ feedback to create more relevant content.

In spite of frustrations and the time commitment, networking is valuable and, ultimately, worth the efforts to search for the right organization(s) and people that click with you. To that end, I encourage diversifying your network to include:

• Organizations in your current professional/business industry
• Organizations in industries you would like to get to know better to broaden your perspective
• A group that focuses on fun around common interests
• A community service group because in order to receive, giving is a prerequisite

My brother successfully demonstrated this when he created a reciprocal network after leaving the military as an engineer and becoming a Realtor. Although he had an MBA, I had my doubts. His experience and education was based in math and engineering—and to me that was Swahili for not necessarily a people-person. He dispelled my doubts by building a network about the “home buying experience” rather than selling real estate, which resulted in record breaking sales and service awards for him. He had a sincere desire to help people and not just sell to them; his proclivity for service and relationship-building earned him overwhelming referrals and repeat business.

Great networks are built on a sincere reciprocal infrastructure stemming from relationship first and business second, which cannot be created overnight.  Established networks are helpful, especially when you are experiencing challenges, because they can offer support quicker than newer connections.

With any worthwhile journey you will encounter frustrations along the way, but you shouldn’t give up entirely. Instead, continue to seek an organization that clicks with you so, through your challenges, you won’t have to experience the difference between people saying “Sure, I can help you,” or just letting their silence be more charitable than words.

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Written by: Gwendolyn M. Ward, Principal at FOOW?

FOOW? Latest Blogs: http://www.foowater.com/blogs/

Email: swimming@foowater.com

Website: http://www.foowater.com

When a friend asked me to write about workplace bullying, I remembered the first time I was bullied by a senior manager. She told me I was doing a great job but needed to learn how to “kiss her a#$” (her words) for a promotion. Her boldness took me off guard and I blurted, “that aint NEVER going to happen!” My response ignited a one-year battle of wills over boundaries.

For most of us, defining boundaries is an ongoing, complex journey that typically starts in childhood. I was eight when bullied by teenagers while walking home from school with my cousin. We ignored them using the ‘sticks and stones’ mantra until one day, one of them pushed me in the street. Since we were outnumbered and outsized, I decided to tell my big brother but my grandmother saw me first and asked what was wrong. I told her.

My grandmother immediately asked where they lived and went to their house, introduced herself and stated why she was there. The bullies denied everything and she calmly told them “lie or truth, you or not you, these two are off-limits, so do not speak to or touch us again and tell your friends.” She didn’t state a consequence; she just set the boundary and the bullying ended. This was my bullying defining moment because I knew when my butt hit that concrete, I needed help beyond me and, fortunately, my grandmother was fearless.

I was also fearless when battling my first bullying manager; I wasn’t going to be intimidated and she was equally determined to break me. I was wholly engaged in the fight until a peer said it was creating a hostile environment and I needed to go to Human Resources (HR). The HR manager said in a meandering, emphatic way that senior management “is what it is at that level” and since my performance wasn’t suffering, I was handling it. End result from HR: If I was on fire and needed water, I would have been ashes.

But instead of burning, I emailed my documentation to a senior executive who sent it to the HR executive who addressed it with the bully and the HR managers. The senior executive and I met and discussed the art of office politics, as well as my confrontational skills and value to the company. He encouraged me to consider another management position, but I realized that on some twisted level, the battle of wills was an unconscious distraction from the fact that I no longer found the job challenging. His responsiveness was appreciated, but I started a job search and accepted an offer six weeks later.

Bullying became pervasive as I continued to climb the corporate ladder. In most cases, it was rolling downhill from C-Suite positions. Through these trials, my boundaries remained intact, but I improved my confrontation skills by being assertive and not antagonistic. Generally, the bullies backed off immediately—and when they didn’t, I escalated it.

Most bullies are scared of confrontation, which is why they typically hide behind their position or size for intimidation. Simply put, they wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. It’s like a fix and, like any other addict, they crave the high. Workplace bullying is a multi-level permission fix requiring weakening consent. Bullies deflect their weaknesses with superficial strength by exploiting working relationships, the bullied person struggles with setting and maintaining boundaries, and the companies allows it when they fail to implement a standard conduct policy for employees, regardless of position or expertise.

Sometimes bullying is stuck at the victims’ level because they are afraid to report it, which is the key reason a bully needs an agreeable target…sometimes it works for them:

• In a company meeting, a senior manager’s boss screamed she was an idiot for taking notes while she was speaking. The boss was using the F-bomb at the manager in front of her subordinates and peers, and the manager visually cowered and remained silent. After the meeting, coworkers told the manager that she took the high road, but to me it looked like road kill because it was painful to watch.

And sometimes…not so much:

• One coworker expressed indifference to a boss’ attempted bullying by saying, “I was eating when I accepted this job and I’ll be eating when I leave─either from home or from the jail cell they throw me in for assaulting you.” The boss looked startled, walked away and the bullying ceased.

No one can determine your limits or set your boundaries better than you. That’s why the first line of defense is always you—stand up for yourself first and, if you don’t have the strength, seek help. If the help isn’t helpful, seek additional help or find an exit. It’s not easy to stand up, but neither is constant humiliation. Martin Luther King said it best with “A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.”

Written by: Gwendolyn M. Ward, Principal at FOOW?

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Trying to find the ideal job is like trying to find the ideal mate. Mr. Right may sound good on paper but off of it, his issues coupled with yours may overflow a newsstand. So what do you do?

1) Decide quickly based on the first few meetings that “he’s just not that into you” or vice versa and keep looking OR

2) Date him to determine if the good outweighs the bad. If it does, make the most of it. If it doesn’t, leave a bit wiser OR

3) Settle into an unfulfilling relationship because you feel it is safer than searching for someone else, or identifying what you want and pursuing it. So you redirect your discontent by focusing on your mate’s issues, to avoid focusing on your own…believing that “treading water” in a bad relationship is favorable than swimming towards something better.

Searching for the “right” job can follow this same trend; when you think it’s the Ideal Job on paper, REALITY throws salt in your fantasy leaving you sometimes optimistic, wiser, or just a bit salty.

In a FOOW? workshop, a participant four years into his first job after college said he hated his job with a passion. After two years of job searching and constant interviewing he wasn’t getting any offers despite his marketable degree. I made a personal observation and told him we could discuss it offline; he said I could inform the group.

I said his bitterness about his job was following him around like a bad odor. Until he got rid of it, he wouldn’t see progress. I explained that hiring managers are looking for someone to solve their problems and not add to them, so he needed to leave his “Bitterman” home—especially during interviews. Better yet, get rid of him because otherwise he will keep you in a viscous cycle of discontent. I also encouraged him to deconstruct his discontent by interviewing his ego to determine the source of the bitterness. Was it linked to him, the job or both? If it was him, another job would only be a temporary solution. He agreed that he was bitter, understood my perspective and thanked me for being brutally honest. Yeah, he said brutal.

Like your first date, companies are looking for people who are running towards them, not running from something. Sometimes our “Mr. Right” requirements are one-sided—we list his irrefutable requirements without acknowledging our own irrefutable flaws. This results in us bringing nothing more than “wants” to the expectation table, while looking for big returns for ourselves.

I have had people tell me they would do a better job when they work for a better company or when they get a better raise or a better promotion. But until then, they will do just enough. In other words, they want the company to prove that it deserves their effort, which is a bit delusional.

Delusion can be divine in a temporary state (like the honeymoon period in a relationship). But long term, delusion tends to overfeed your ego, inflating it until a collision with reality is inevitable. For example, one time I was eating lunch with coworkers and one of them was calling her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends ugly. I said, ALL of them were ugly and she said yes. So I asked if she was the exception or the rule. She laughed it off, but her eyes were cursing me out. I was honestly asking out of curiosity, because I was fascinated with her ego.

Reality can be a humbling messenger even when delivered through big-mouth curiosity. Accepting reality means you have to accept responsibility for your own satisfaction. And I can attest from personal experience that that’s not easy—and so deflecting reality is comfortable even when it is counter-productive.

Discovering if you need to improve what you know to get what you want, or improve who you are to get who you want, is all about you and your ability to respond to challenges. The dog may have eaten your “homework” when you were eight, but did he eat your “motivation” at 28, 38, 48, 58?

Having a job you hate is like being in a loveless marriage with someone who pays the bills you can’t afford. In both cases, you stay and grow bitter—treading water, because it is hard to say goodbye to misery if you don’t leave.

There is no one path to success, but defining yours starts with you making a concerted effort to do better at identifying what you want, how to get it and pursuing it. “Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart to give yourself to it” is an applicable Buddha quote.

You will encounter issue-laden people and companies in your personal and professional lives; just remember that failure isn’t a bad teacher, but failing to learn is. If the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it. At some point it is not the people, job, or situation that’s not “right”—it is simply the “I” in bitter…which is you.

Written by: Gwendolyn M. Ward, Principal at FOOW?

Website: http://www.foowater.com

FOOW? Latest Blogs: http://www.foowater.com/blogs/

Email: swimming@foowater.com

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Years ago, I was hired to replace a manager who was staying with the company but moving to another department. In my first meeting with the manager, she provided a synopsis of the 35-member team, identifying winners, troublemakers and the borderline losers (her words). I don’t know what part of the ego her labeling came from, but it was revealing.

Labels aside, I engaged the team through a series of meetings where we introduced ourselves, talked about our backgrounds and discussed performance expectations. When some team members wanted to complain about the previous manager, I stopped them and made it clear that our relationship started the day we met. Any unresolved relationship issues were irrelevant, because I wasn’t interested in co-starring in anybody’s drama.

Several weeks in, I was getting acclimated and having a great time with the team. Our only hitch was the previous manager. She constantly asked me if I was experiencing the same issues with the same people she had. When I said no, she would become agitated and start repeating her synopsis. I realized she wasn’t concerned about a successful transition, but was more concerned about being right. She didn’t want me to replace her—she wanted me to extend her leadership reign.

Although she was like a slow-acting poison, I was patient with her because I understood how difficult it is to watch someone replace you, especially if you don’t know how to let go. If your replacement makes changes, for better or for worse, it means either you were lacking or your replacement is destroying your good works. It’s a difficult situation for the previous manager to witness and some may become too sensitive to the changes, thus creating an ungraceful exit.

After my patience and diplomacy ran its course, I used the advice of Henri Frederic Amiel, “A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.” So I cut the knot by telling her I wasn’t interested in team members disparaging her and vice versa so hit the road and take your “misery needs company” labeling show with you. Needless to say, she didn’t go quietly, but she did go.

Learning the art of exiting gracefully is challenging because Emotions supersede Intellect and Ego beats the crap out of Common Sense. This is why break-ups are hard and, unfortunately in some cases, filled with bad things like strife and tacky drama coupled with collateral damage—all for the sake of SOMEONE needing to “be right.”

In the worst workplace situations, the “being right” need commonly manifests itself in ungraceful exits. We see this when people:

•Submit their notice and then go on a ‘negativity campaign’ about anything and everyone
•Submit their notice and make a concerted effort not to work another day for two weeks
•Not submit a notice and not return or send an email stating yesterday was their last day
•Commit acts of violence that we see in the news headlines

Exiting a bad personal or professional situation is a puzzle with a lot of pieces. And like a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces must interlock to create a bigger picture beyond your current situation. One time I was considering a young candidate for a high stress position and we were on the fence about his decision-making skills. We decided to check his references and a previous employer told us that on his last day, he forged his manager’s signature when he wanted to leave early and the manager wasn’t available. They also said that prior to this incident he was a good employee but this action was unacceptable. If I didn’t already have reservations about his judgment, I could have cited immaturity but since I did, we didn’t hire him.

Considering the bigger picture vs. acting on current frustration may serve you better if you ask yourself “what will I accomplish by trying to exact revenge?” and “what if I need a clearance or reference in the future, will my exit negatively impact this? Even if you are feeling unappreciated or wronged, why taint your previous successes or contributions with a bitter exit?

A better option to serve your bigger picture is to be grateful for your new job and celebrate your victory by giving proper notice, completing all the work you can and creating an action plan for the next person. Just release the “bitter” and move to “better.”

Whether it is a personal or professional exit, sometimes you have to use the motto: “I don’t want to be your friend or foe; it is just time for me to go.” It doesn’t mean the person or the organization isn’t good, it just means they weren’t good for you.

Written by: Gwendolyn M. Ward, Principal at FOOW?
Website: http://www.foowater.com
Email: swimming@foowater.com

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My nephew called to tell me about his new car and I shared my first car experience at 16: I told him that during the first night I kept looking out the window to verify that it was real. He laughed and admitted that he had done the same thing. When we disconnected, I thought about the “honeymoon period” we tend to have with people and things, and how exhilarating it is at first until it morphs into feelings far less interesting like responsibility. 

Several cars later, I never did a “reality check” after bringing them home, because to me, they were just responsibility wrapped up in transportation. My first car represented freedom since I didn’t have to borrow my parents’ car, or wait for a ride after school or from work. It was my car and I was driving on cloud nine until responsibility swerved in front of me. Understanding responsibility is relatively straightforward when it comes to financial matters; you either execute with timeliness or not, based on your maturity and means. On the other hand, the ability to respond when it involves relationships, personal or professional can be more complicated.

This became clear when an alumnus told me how her excitement after graduation led her and friends to visit their Alma Mater frequently the first year. After the second year, the excitement waned and it became a hassle and they lost interest. Four years drifted by and they hadn’t participated in any activities. When I asked her to define hassle, she said the eight-hour round trip, her job, boyfriend, the football team and possibly her three-legged dog or hog-I wasn’t sure because she was talking in circles. The short version was “she hated to miss it, but she really didn’t want to go.” Not only was her excitement gone, it was completely lost and she wasn’t trying to find it.

This conversation colorfully summed up the main challenge of Alma Maters after graduation, RELEVANCE. How do they matter and keep the relevance while their Alums’ lives evolve? What I wanted to say to the Alum with the three-legged hog was, “you got a life, right?” It made sense that she would go back to the familiar when surrounded by the unfamiliar. She graduated, moved to a new city and didn’t know many people. So she bonded with her college friends and they all went back to the familiar, their Alma Mater. That was fun until they became familiar with their new lives and perhaps realized that the value of those alumni activities had faded away, to the point that it no longer outweighed the efforts required to stay connected.

Familiarity and value are strongly connected to donations. A friend curtly told me that she didn’t donate to her university because she didn’t feel a connection. She donated and supported a number of charities from cancer to heart associations, but donating to her Alma Mater was not an option. She received a great education and paid a great sum to get it, NEXT! To her, it was black-and-white, but that is not always the case. We asked Alums:

 Have you ever donated money to your college? Why? 

56% – Yes and 44% No 

Most of the Yeses were people who received some type of scholarship themselves, so they wanted to pay it forward with the next generation. Other reasons stated were pride in their college, a way to give back, a way to show support to a particular program like the drama club or another club in which they were involved. 

Most of the Nos didn’t provide reasons. Maybe, like my friend, it was an emphatic No!, followed by NEXT. The few that provided reasons said they couldn’t afford it, their school didn’t need it, or paying their student loans is their donation. 

Again, Mattering appears to be the overall challenge for colleges/universities to connect and stay connected with their Alums. In our previous blogs, 88% of Alums said they did not participate in their alumni activities while 66% said they did not feel that their Alma Mater supported them beyond graduation.  For some Alma Maters, defining Mattering will be harder than creating fire with a wet match, but for others it will light a fire under their creativity to reach out and become relevant on different levels outside of their current view. Because loyalty is not inherent upon graduation, especially with the millennial generation: it is EARNED.

My encounter with church envelopes taught me that in a career train wreck every light in the tunnel is not a way out.

At the time, my job was a train wreck pile-up of unchallenging responsibilities coupled with bickering, backstabbing, and bitter co-workers on the management team. I was frantically sending out résumés to escape this disaster and a company contacted me, looking for a manager to create infrastructure to improve their employee and customer experience. Since that was my fame, I took the bait and arrived at the interview revving to go. I immediately learned that the division created church envelopes. And the hiring manager had more passion about the envelopes than a half-naked, painted football fan in Wisconsin.

The manager effused enthusiastically about geographic areas, various religions and the intriguing intricacies of the church envelope business. His enthusiasm, fascination for the product and his accomplishments were clearly a thrill a minute to himself. I, on the other hand, was underwhelmed. Being curious by nature and harboring a love of problem solving, I have never once wondered about the origins of church envelopes. And yet, there I sat, listening to the story behind the churches and the envelopes with a plastered smile…wondering about the injury potential of leaping from a 4^th floor window in a suit and 3-inch heels.

Church envelopes plus a manager who focused on his accomplishments while dismissing employee development to off-the-shelf tape viewings equaled what? Another train wreck? Or was I being paranoid? So I started asking questions to clarify expectations and they basically went unanswered; instead, he stayed on the course of describing his accomplishments over the years. Without a doubt, there was an “I” in his team, which meant his definition of progress was myopic at best, and more underwhelming than church envelopes. It was also clear that he wasn’t the one pushing for this new position and wasn’t on board.

At some point, I realized that jumping out the window in the middle of the interview was, at a minimum, unprofessional. But still, I had to lecture my desperate self who was urging me on, “take it!, at least you will escape your current wreck.” My logical self was saying, Girl you better RECOGNIZE that every light in the tunnel isn’t an escape, sometimes it’s just another train. I finally threw my desperate self out the window and kept sending résumés until I received a better match.

Personally or professionally, change can be a challenge. However, when your desperate self is in complete control, the results can be unfavorable regardless of the challenge. A little desperation mixed with logic is not a bad thing. Desperation can motivate you to change, and logic can help you evaluate past decisions that resulted in your current situation.

Later, I realized that the interview was a meeting of despair, where the manager was desperate to maintain the status quo and I was desperate to escape my wreck. By luck, my logical self slapped my desperate self off the train tracks which lead to better decision making by me. For the manager, I assumed he eventually got on board because for change to happen favorably, buy-in is needed-especially at the leadership level. If not, you will have a situation where someone is always waiting for his or her turn to speak, without the benefit of listening. We asked Alums…How can the Alum Associations or Career Centers improve?

For Alumni Associations and Career Centers

“Offering courses that help further develop your

professional career roadmap/skills as you transition through the different stages in your career. Helping

to evaluate what has worked in your career, what’s important, and how your path needs to change as your lifestyle evolves with work/family.”

“Offer assistance in transitioning to a career or during a job transition.”

“Do MBTI, focus on what you can

find passion in for your career.”

“Provide more outreach/services for gra

duates.”

“Go beyond the typically resume and interview tips to teaching real world tools that will keep me from feeling defeated while I am adjusting to life after graduation

“Alumni associations and career centers need to get outside their comfort zones and provide better support with career counseling before and after graduation.”

For Alumni Associations

“I enjoyed college but feel they should help students more with their careers after college. As students we invest so much in our education that I feel colleges should invest more in their students’ careers after college.”

“We have sister schools that maybe could have helped. Expand beyond your own alum.”

“Work on post graduation involvement and counseling, transition from school environment to work environment – developing skills needed to succeed in workplace (b/c it’s definitely not the same skills used in the school environment).”

“Students need to be aware of the services while attending. In addition, the emails I rec. are directed at donating funds not really speaking about the services that are offered.”

“Organize local chapters for alums who no longer live in the area.”

“Cultivate relationships with students before they graduate. And become more relevant when engaging students.”

“The Alumni Association can help with employment information.

“You already have our cash – now stick with us! The quarterly magazine doesn’t really speak to opportunities and continuing education.”

“Alum association can offer more of a variety of events.”

“Alum Associations are far more influential than career development centers. I suppose more infrastructure, more “Meet and Greets”, more direct mentoring/shadowing.”

“The Alumni Associations could work harder to connect with their graduates before graduation”.

“Provide more young alum events with reduced price tags!”

“The alumni associations should reach out more to graduates in states other than the ones in which their universities reside. Once you leave the state, the only time they seem to get in touch is when they need donations.”

“The Alumni Association website is hard to navigate and it is frustrating. We are scattered across the country but the center seems to focus on local events only- not cool.”

“It is more important than ever that students and grads have more support in the transition from college to the workforce. The Alumni Associations need to strengthen their transition support.”

For Career Centers

“I wish I had more career counseling. I am back in school in order to begin a second career. Getting “real life” experience made me better understand the type of career I wanted to pursue. I went from high school to a four year college and it wasn’t until I had my second job after college that I realized I wanted to pursue another career.”

“Perhaps by posting what opportunities the career centers have to offer to let people know how they are able to assist graduates in a career path and a job in that field of interest”

“Increase number of career fair type activities.”

“Getting students comfortable to different interviewing styles.”

“Career centers should offer internship opportunities for all students and not just those already enrolled in a major.”

“Having people from various businesses talk with the students- about jobs, the work, work hours, demands, and what they are looking for in employees.”

“Career centers should also be available to graduates who have become unemployed. They should have the resources there to help graduates improve their marketable skills.”

“I found that that career counselors were very unorganized but enthusiastic. I had little assistance from them in finding a job or even in what career path to choose. Ultimately I spent years as a waitress before I was discovered by my current boss.”

Career Services + Alumni Relations = whY Alums connect or disconnect after graduation

FOOW? asked Alums a series of questions about their Alma Maters’ support before and after graduation and how it has impacted their current relationship with their former school. The *respondents’, ages 22-62, provided insight on the challenge of answering their Now What?, with or without their school support.

Depending upon the college or university, career services exclusively supports students up to graduation, while Alumni Relations continues the support afterward. In some cases, the line is drawn very clearly, while in others, there is a partnership between the two that extends Alumni support.

Exploring your Now What? is a journey in both lessons and mistakes, requiring a variety of guides along the way. These guides will come in many forms– teachers/professors, counselors, associations, friends, family and sometimes strangers; but what makes us connect to them is how well they meet our immediate needs, our “Reality”.

Your situation plus your Reality consciousness can make answering your Now What? a tricky proposition. Reality is an unforgiving friend, because it comes with a truth that most of prefer to ignore; it is the space between where we think we are and where we think we should be. You think you should wear designer clothing to project a successful image, but your salary says you should design-your-own.

For some, the transition of their degree from paper into the workplace can make them feel like a wet fish on dry land. They are eager to put their degree to work but can’t quite find their flow to contentment because that flow is filled with experiences of joy, disappointment and discontentment sprinkled with periods of bewilderment. The process of merging our expectations with reality comes with expectations not being met immediately, feelings of being underutilized coupled with grunt work. People will tell you it is called ‘paying your dues’, but the question you may need help with is ‘how will I know the difference between timely payments and overpayment?’

The career services and alumni relations BIG CHALLENGE is to help with these experiences before, during and after graduation and the solutions are not one dimensional. Their intentions and goals are to create a platform of support for students and graduates ….but as in life; Reality can get in the way:

*Have you ever used your college career center services? 54% – YES

*Are you involved in any alumni activities – 88% – NO

Perception, Reality, Intention, Frustration, and Guidance are the parts that we review to solve for wh(Y) in this series. UP NEXT – 2/26/09 blog, we discuss the reasoning behind the numbers … from the ’08 alum who said: “I almost feel forgotten by my university” to Alums who found their career center “very helpful” to “there was nothing they could provide that I couldn’t figure out for myself”.