any advice on maintaining long-term professional contacts without sounding awkward or being overbearing? With alot of effort I feel that I’ve trained myself to socialize as if I were an extrovert, but it never comes naturally, its always a substantially draining effort. What inevitably happens is that I make great contacts through jobs, internships, etc, but do a bad job of keeping up, especially when it comes to people who live outside my current city or school. I suppose the secret is just to send an email/facebook every once in a while, but I always feel like I come across as awkward.

And like you, I’m not shy much, and I’m more comfortable with public speaking than many of my extrovert friends, probably because I don’t care about what other people think of me as much as they do.

Anyway, these tips are helpful. I am a college undergrad now, with a very limited network.

Great article! This sums me up too. It’s only when I need to draw on the expertise of other people that I think, “Doh, I really need to network!” But I’m uncomfortable with it. Thanks for prodding me to make an effort.

Good advice, probably difficult to act on, but I’ll try.

Here’s my main problem: I simply cannot talk loud enough for very long in the large, crowded, noisy events, and then being able to hear what the other person is saying w/o being right on top of them! How to deal with that? Any advice? I watch all the people around me seemingly have these amazing, animated, fun conversations, is it all just fake?