Linda was among the first people who utilized her connections for her friends. She had always to intended to use them, but always assured her boyfriend that she wouldn't, even to the last moment. And till the evening after Linda had left to go on a coffee chat with one of Charles & Lee's lawyers, an old high school friend, he had no knowledge of her intentions. She then opened the conversation in the following manner. Observing Charlie employed in drafting yet another version of her resume, Linda suddenly told her,
"I hope Charles & Lee will like your resume, Charlie."
"We have no knowledge of what Charles & Lee will like," said Ian resentfully, "since no one has met and talked to any of their lawyers."
"But you forget Ian," said Charlie, "that we'll meet him on the first day of Recruitment Week, and that Dennis promised to introduce us to one of the recruiters, a friend of his friend's."
"I don't believe even for one second that Dennis would do such a thing. He has two very close brothers from his fraternity who are pre-law and is a selfish, hypocritical douche. I think he's worthless."
"I agree," said Linda "and I'm glad that you're not depending on him for this."
Ian stayed irritably silent but unable to stay still; he started yelling at Katie.
"Stop coughing like that Katie, Jesus! Don't you understand my feelings right now? You're not letting them settle down!"
"Katie isn't coughing on purpose," said Linda "she just had a little bad timing with them."
"I don't cough for fun you know," replied Katie.
"When is your next recruitment event Charlie?"
"In about two weeks."
"Augh, it is," moaned Ian "and Dennis won't come back from his vacation to Prague until the day before, so it's impossible for him to introduce his connection since he wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet him yet."
"Then Ian, you can be the upper hand here and introduce my friend Fred Lee, a corporate lawyer at Charles & Lee, to him."
"Stop being so impossible Linda, how can I introduce him if I don't even know him? You're always messing with my feelings."
"I think you're being perfectly intelligent here. Two weeks really is a small amount of time for you to really know someone. However, if you don't decide to introduce to him, someone else will steal the connection away. And you don't want Dennis and his two fraternity brothers to do that. They'll probably see it as an act of kindness if you introduce Fred to them; but if you don't want to do it, I'll do the introductions myself."
Linda's roommates stared at her and Ian just said, "Nonsense, nonsense!"
"What do you mean by nonsense?" exclaimed Linda. "Do you think that the subtle arts of networking and the importance of it are nonsense? I'm not sure if I agree with you here. Meredith, what do you think? You're majoring in philosophy on top of your theatre arts minor. You like thinking and creating lots of deep introspections."
Meredith wanted to say something that would sound both intellectual and deep, but she didn't really know how.
"While Meredith plans her introspection," Linda continued, "let's go back to Charles & Lee."
"I'm so sick of this conversation and Charles & Lee," yelled her boyfriend.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Why didn't you tell me that before? If I knew that several hours ago, I wouldn't have gone on a coffee chat with him. I'm sorry, but since I've talked to him and told him about the girls, we can't really escape meeting him."
The surprise and glee of Linda's roommates was exactly what Linda had wanted with Ian's being the largest. But when the first round of excitement was over, Ian declared that he knew that it would happen from the start.
"That was so nice of you Linda! I know I would be able to persuade you. I was pretty sure that your friendship with the girls was way too strong for you not to use your connections. Well, I'm content. And it was such a funny joke too, that you went to go talk with him just now, without a word to any of us."
"Now, Katie, you can cough as much as you want," said Linda, while leaving the room, tired of her boyfriend's declarations.
"She's the bestest of friends you guys have ever had," said Ian, when the door was closed. "I don't know how you're ever going to make it up to him, or me for that matter. It's not super appealing you know, to network now, especially when we have grad school and the GMAT's coming for us. But for our friends, we'd do anything! Michelle, though you're a freshman, I think that Fred might talk with you at the Recruitment Event."
"Pssh!" said Michelle, "I'm not worried; even though I'm the youngest, I have the most Twitter follows out of us all!"
The rest of the evening was spent deciding how soon Fred would invite them all for a networking dinner and deciding what questions they should ask him.
