![]() I graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture in 1973. I’m based in Ferguson, Missouri in the USA. I really enjoyed learning about Sally's specialism and hearing her plans, she even helped me to better understand a work item I had been working on! Sally definitely lifted my evening and I hope our conversation lifted her too. Meeting someone completely new is a joy, and we shared enough of a scientific background that we could have a really good conversation about our fields. As Sally had recently graduated from UCL it was so interesting for me to hear what the student experience is like now. Sally and I talked non-stop for about two hours, I felt like we had a head start on connecting given our shared first name! We discussed our respective experiences of UCL, 20 years apart, our scientific backgrounds and research, and our working lives and future plans. UCL Coffee Connect was a brilliant way to inject novelty into my life and get involved with the university again. Towards the end of 2020 I had worked from home nearly the whole time since the start of the pandemic and therefore met very few new people during the year. I'd been meaning to get back involved in UCL life for a while. ![]() What a clever and quirky idea, UCL Alumni Relations, thank you! Dr Sally Gadsdon (UCL Biology 2002) It felt right to do something different, something I might not have done had life been carrying on as usual. ![]() In a year where words like “pandemic” and “unprecedented” became common parlance, silver linings were hard to come by. We could have been standing right next to each other and not known it. It was quite scary… good scary! In fact, our paths might literally have crossed, as it transpired that she had participated in the Berlin Art Fair last year and I had been at that same event. UCL Coffee Connect offered a totally random chance to ‘meet’ a totally random person, and I ended up connecting with someone with whom I shared so much. We had so much in common! From our educational backgrounds to having cross-cultural marriages to our children. I must admit to Googling her in advance of getting in touch! After a bit of ping pong, our date was set and it turned out to be one of the easiest conversations I've had with a stranger. When I learned that my match had graduated in 2011, more than fifteen years after I had, I wondered what we might have in common. If I were to describe my UCL Coffee Connect experience in a single word it would be ‘serendipitous’. Thousands of alumni and students have taken part in previous rounds of UCL Coffee Connect. The most important thing is to be curious and approach these conversations as a chance to learn more. You can use them to find out about one another, your experience at UCL, your hometown, your respective job roles, what you are working on now, your challenges or successes: whatever you'd like. These conversations aren’t prescriptive, you can talk about whatever you want. ![]() There’s no obligation on you to form a relationship beyond the conversation: it can be a one-off conversation, or the start of something more (we hope it will be the latter).
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