Business

Networking. Just the word makes my teeth itch. I remember my first foray into the so-called art of professional schmoozing—standing awkwardly in a room full of people who all seemed to have their lives together, like extras in some corporate utopia film. I was armed with nothing but a stack of freshly printed business cards…

I remember the first time I walked into a mentorship meeting, wide-eyed and clutching my notebook like it held the secrets of the universe. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. What I got instead was an hour of platitudes about “synergy” and “thinking outside the box”—a Jenga tower of buzzwords ready to collapse under the weight of…

I remember my first brush with “effective leadership” as vividly as the screech of a subway train during rush hour. My then-manager, a self-proclaimed visionary, had a knack for making chaos look like strategy. Every Monday morning, he’d stroll into the office with a swagger that suggested he had just solved world hunger. But by…