Do I need to make school friends to help my career?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Grenth

Full Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2015
Messages
161
Reaction score
258
I'm a first year and I don't have any friends in my cohort or at school in general. I don't find this to be a problem personally because I have friends outside of school and I do like my cohort/labmates. However, my lab had an alumna come and speak and she emphasized how important the personal connections/friendships she made with her cohort have been professionally. I have also heard this from other people including my PI.

I am friendly with people at school and I enjoy our classes and group projects but I don't have any actual friends. I wouldn't mind making friends with my cohort but they all seemed to form groups in the Fall (I had a weird schedule and didn't have much of a chance for connecting) and I feel like I can't really break into the established groups despite giving it some effort. Today, for example, I was talking to a classmate and another classmate interrupted me to ask her to hang out but did not ask me. Later I saw on social media that they and most of the cohort went out without inviting me. I don't feel slighted by this, I just think they don't think about me much because I'm quiet although I do make an effort to talk to my cohort and participate in class. My labmates are great but we don't interact much due to the nature of our lab and that most of them are 4/5th years about to head to internship.

So I've been wondering if it will be professionally detrimental to me if I'm not friends with people at school? Or is this a big enough issue that I need to find ways to make it happen?

Members don't see this ad.
 
less effective professionally? probably so. networks matter. I'm not sure why you expect a different response here than others have told you.

Besides, having close friendships in your lab/program/cohort makes grad school, as with life, more tolerable.
 
Relationships are everything.

Prioritize, cultivate, and nurture them.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Networking outside of your program is probably more helpful career-wise, but both groups have their benefits. Friends in your cohort can make the grad school process a bit easier and make extending your network easier. First year is still early, so there is still time to develop relationships.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I'm in the minority here, but I think "detrimental" feels a little too intense. If you do not make strong connections with your cohort, you can still have these relationships with faculty, or your fellow interns and externs. Some of the best relationships I currently have are with supervisors from previous clinical placements. While in a broad sense, networking benefits from having as many connected relationships as possible, I think it is more detrimental to your well-being to "force" relationships and stress about it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I'll offer an alternate/minority opinion but this assumes that difficulties are based off of preference rather than some skill deficit/personality thing:

In general, I do not like other psychologists. Didn't socialize with my cohort, don't socialize with psychologists now aside from a very small few. There are pros and cons to this and some of it is specialty and practice dependent.

1) Private practice: Several specialties get referrals from other professions rather than other psychologist. In this instance, collegial relationships with other psychologists are less important.

2) Socialization: Some specialties seem to attract people that are not that fun, and some are full of fun people. The specialties that breed a "My training is better than your training/my practice is better than yours" mentality are pretty hard to have fun in or let your guard down. Some are super fun. But you can make friends anywhere.

3) Job offers: in a traditional AMC/VA/whatever setting, there are a lot of jobs that are found and given through social channels. That being said, some offers come from other professions (e.g., medicine).

4) Research opportunities: There are ways around this, just like the others but this is the big one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
I've been out of school a while now so I'll give you the perspective from the other side. I'm still on friendly terms with my former lab mates, most of the people in my cohort, and a few other people in other specialties I met through coursework, nearby labs, etc. By "friendly terms" I mean we might follow each other on social media, and if I happen to be visiting their city I might meet up for a drink - that kind of thing. Their companionship absolutely made grad school more fun and memorable, but so far none of these relationships has had any influence on my career. Only a couple of people I know from grad school are close, "inner circle" type friends.

For some reason I didn't mesh with most of my internship cohort. Instead I found friends in other training programs and disciplines at overlapping sites. Again, I don't think this affected anything career-wise.

The people I've met at conferences and through professional societies have been more influential in my career. My advisor was great about getting me exposed to these larger societies early in my training, and this has led to a lot of opportunities in my early career (and, it should be mentioned, some really fun times and travel opportunities).

Anyway, give it some time for things to shake out socially. Meanwhile don't worry about whether people in your cohort will help your career. I don't think this is actually that common.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
I got along well with my peers in my cohort, but have not really stayed in touch with any of them and it has not been a problem at all. If I had stayed in the Socal area where many of them are, it might have mattered more.
 
Maybe it's all in the framing, but I would say that it's a question of missing out on a potential professional benefit versus being actually detrimental to your career. Networking absolutely does matter, and having friendships with your grad school cohort is one aspect of networking. There's no way around that - if you're not part of a particular group, you're less likely to benefit professionally via opportunities that arise from that group's members. But your grad school cohort isn't the only opportunity to network.
 
Remember that networking is not about becoming bosom buddies. I went to a very close-knit graduate program and then a very large internship program hoping I'd have the same experience. Nope, but no big. There is still this acknowledgement at conferences, at places I interview, etc., when I meet an alum from the internship. If I ever find myself in the hiring position, I'd definitely take a second look at a former colleague or someone associated with them. It's that sense of shared heritage and values, even if you don't have a standing karaoke date.
 
Thanks for the replies. Reading through these it sounds like as long as I keep up positive relationships with my classmates/labmates then I don't have to try and be "friends" outside of school. So, I'm not going to stress about it and if it happens organically that will be great but if not I feel good that we are already have networking level relationships. I am already working on some research with a couple of them that we set up ourselves and I can see that kind of stuff ongoing. I also have three more years with these guys to build relationships and plenty of chances to network at my practicums/internship/postdoc and with the professional groups I'm part of.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Top