One of my favorite things about Hopkins is how open people are to conversations and sharing what they have learnt through their lives. The biggest form I’ve experienced this in is coffee chats. Simply put, you reach out to any person you are interested in learning more about and set up a time to meet.
Before college, I was unsure of how to ask someone questions about their career path. It seemed like a form of forced dialogue and, although I wanted to learn from others’ experiences, I didn’t know where to start. This all changed through a summer course. As part of the BDP Fellowship (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor Research Program) that I was a part of this past summer, I took a one-credit course called the Life Design Summer Experience Practicum (LDSEP). The objective of this course was to become future-ready, and one of the assignments was to ask two people to be part of our “curiosity conversations.” These had to be people whose lives you were interested in learning about. This really forced me out of my comfort zone in the best way.
I reached out to a recent Hopkins alum as well as my research group’s principal investigator (PI) to chat about their experiences. At first, I had a list of questions prepared, but as soon as we started, I didn’t need the questions because they were so eager to share their experiences and advice that the conversation progressed naturally. The Hopkins alum and I realized we were both actively involved in HopAI (the Artificial Intelligence Society at Hopkins). I spoke to her about how she got research opportunities and published research during her time at Hopkins and what career options exist for someone who is interested in software and artificial intelligence. In my meeting with my PI, we went off on a tangent discussing Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Causality, and because of that conversation, I’ll be starting a new research project about this topic.
In addition to the LDSEP course, Hopkins also sets up different opportunities for students to have coffee chats with professors, professionals, and alumni. For example, students in the Whiting School of Engineering are required to meet with their faculty advisor at least once every semester during their time at Hopkins. Your faculty advisor is an assigned faculty member with whom you can discuss your career plan, classes, research interests, and anything in between. My advising meetings with my faculty advisor, Professor Jason Eisner, are super insightful because we also end up having conversations about cutting-edge concepts in computer science. This always gives me new ideas for projects and research. In just our last meeting, he introduced me to probabilistic programming languages (which is a very exciting technology to work with in one of my projects).
It is totally possible (and encouraged!) to reach out to people yourself and set up chats with them. After attending an entrepreneurship event, I posted on LinkedIn about how I was interested in startups. Just from an eight-sentence post, I got multiple messages from Hopkins students to chat about possible projects and the startup culture here. At a place like Hopkins, you really are surrounded by the brightest peers, and there’s so much to learn from them too. From my coffee chats, I gained insight into what potential projects and collaborations I could start, as well as what is currently happening in the Hopkins startup landscape.
In high school, I don’t think I fully grasped what having a “network” meant. Only in college did I realize your network is just a group of people who you can reach out to and learn from. Coffee chats at Hopkins have opened doors for me that I didn’t even know existed. The people here are really excited to talk about their experiences and guide and mentor students. I guess what I’m saying is that if you see someone has a similar career trajectory as one you would like to pursue, or if you’re just curious about their work, it is always worth it to send a cold email and set up a coffee chat.
