I've had a read of the summary ' Never Eat Alone' - http://treypennington.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/never-eat-alone-by-keith-ferrazzi.pdf

What scares me is that I felt irritable half-way through reading that. I really feel networking is completely pretentious and that the author is just describing ways with which to re-define and re-conceptualize what essentially feels like targeting and using people. Sometimes I think this will be my downfall in academia.

I'm useless at networking... mainly because I feel like a phony. Does anyone else feel a bit like this? Do you have a way to tackle these situations?

I have a fellow student in the same field as me who uses every conversation opportunity as a means to brag about the potentials in her life. She keeps telling me how she will potentially do X , Y and Z and often I feel drained listening. I would be fine with it if I felt she was sincere in her passion but she seems to be chasing the big names in our field purely to secure her position as someone noteworthy. She doesn't seem to really care for the area we are in, and keeps dropping names into the conversation when we talk in order to cement her position in my eyes. She also keeps questioning what I am getting up to academically... which would be fine if she were a friend who actually cared, but she seems driven to compete with me. This may sound childish but when we sit to take notes together when a speaker is giving a talk on our area, I can see her looking at what I've written down and writing it down herself. Am I to take this episode as a bizarre compliment or what? I'm very tired of her bragging!

How do you cope with a bragging colleague?

Hi, thanks for your replies. Would it be too much of a leap to go from working with an adult population for my masters to completing a PhD involving something more developmental (i.e. young people).

I'm doing my masters now and I'd like to know how important it is for a masters thesis area to coincide with what you would like to do for a PhD.

I have the chance to gain some computational neurosci/neuroimaging skills but not in the area I'd like to do my PhD in. Is it wise to conduct a thesis solely to gain skills? Or should I do a thesis connected with my area of interest, despite not being able to acquire the skills I mentioned above.

Can anyone help? Thank you.