This past Wednesday, at the Rose Cafe, I had the opportunity to listen to Christa Downey from the Engineering Career Center. Although I have heard her speak before (she came to talk in one of my classes recently), I found this Rose Cafe to be extremely useful. The talk focused a lot on building a network, which is something that I have often struggled to do. This is particularly true when it comes to talking with professors. While I would say that I have a pretty good network of peers, I do not have very many adults in my network. I find professors in particular difficult to talk to because they all seem to know so much more than me, and because I often do not know what to say to them. Pretty much everyone at the talk agreed that they find professors intimidating to some degree, even though most professors actually want to be approached by students. I think that the main problem is that the professors just seem so distant from the students. This is especially true in a big lecture hall. I have found that the greatest way to reduce that feeling of intimidation that students feel is to have interactions with professors in more informal settings. At least in my case, I would find it much easier to have a conversation with Professor Avery after running into her in the hallways of Rose, than I would to have a conversation with a professor after class. As a result, I am very grateful for having a house professor to help make professors seem more approachable. However the other problem I have is that I often do not know what to say to professors, which is why I only ever attend office hours if I have a very specific question on the homework.