Some of you will become our closest friends, our partners, our collaborators. Some of you will change our lives, and we might change yours.

We’re taught to think that becoming who we are is something we do alone. Find yourself, build yourself, improve yourself, be self-made.

But that’s rarely how life works.

We become through other people. The friend who made us braver, the person who believed in us before we did, the conversation that stayed with us, the invitation we nearly turned down, or the stranger we almost never met.

Most of those people came into our lives while we were simply living. Studying, working, living somewhere, joining something, showing up.

And yet, even when we spend years around the same people, so much of what could happen between us never does.

Somewhere along the way, we turned something deeply human into networking.

Make an impression, exchange details, move on.