This week’s Rose Cafe featured Christa Downey from the Engineering Career Advising Office. It was very interesting to take part in what was more of a discussion than a lecture, where most of the participants seemed to be there for the same reason I was: to get advice. The topic was developing your mentor network and ensuring that you have a collection of people to whom you can go to for support and guidance. As a relatively shy person, I have always found it difficult to reach out to professors, and many of the other students at the cafe either felt similarly to me or were transfer students who knew they were at a time disadvantage and wanted to make the most of their years at Cornell. Personally, I found that our conversation on time management was the most meaningful to me. Chris talked about how you should make goals for yourself – for example, making one faculty connection each semester – and how that requires you to take time out of your normal schedule to go to office hours or find other opportunities to connect with people. While it sometimes seems impossible to find the free time to do such things, I agree that forming relationships with professors or other people who have the capacity to be mentors is one of the most valuable things you can do with your time at Cornell.