I plan to cultivate my personal learning network by staying in contact with a few of the people I met through my college sports career. Although I am not playing this year, I am planning to send thank you letters to a few of my coaches from the past years in case of a playing/job opportunity. This has worked well for me. I have received over 10 offers just since I have been back in school. I plan to enrich my personal learning network through keeping in contact with a few of the bigger names that were intimidating to contact. I plan to contact them directly and through other sources that introduced me to them. I plan to first send emails to them directly and to our mutual contact in order to create easier means of communicating. I also have passed along tips and tools from my athletic career to other members of my network. By volunteering to help, my contacts recommended me to coach at local middle school during this school year. This opportunity was offered solely by who recommended me. This recommendation also fueled my personal training clientele because of the people I have met through my career.

I am also going to take better advantage of LinkedIn and build my network through that social media platform. I think this would make it even easier to reach out and cultivate my personal learning network. I think it would be beneficial to explore expanding LinkedIn with some of my other daily online activities in order to reach all of my other networks. Figuring out what I want to do with my degree is a difficult task when you do not know where to start. LinkedIn gives me a source to start see what my resources doing and what they are interested in. It allows for you to draw connections between your resources and connect your personal resources. I plan to do this before the New Year and input all of my contacts new and old into one place. I plan to reach out to my contacts personal through holiday cards and emails. I was hoping to see a few of my scholarship donors for my past years over the holidays. Hoping I can plan a few dinners and coffees dates over the holidays. I also want to reach out to a couple people from my hometown that followed me from my high school career. I have great resources at home because of the high school I attended and through my mother’s business network.