I genuinely hate coffee chats so much

I am a sophomore at a non-target and have been on about 10-15 so far throughout my senior summer, freshman year, and freshman summer. I never have considered myself an awkward guy and never had problems making friends. The calls I’ve had haven’t even been bad, I’ve had a majority positive experience and feel like I have been able to carry conversation well for the most part, aside from my first few calls.

Except every single time I get response to one of my emails and a call scheduled, I feel this intense dread and anxiety. There have been times were I wasn’t able to eat all day up to the call. This eventually goes away once I make my introduction on the call and get into the flow.

I try to prep as much as I can looking into their background/personal life, possible deals they were on, time in university if alumni. My approach to the call itself has been:
small talk / jumping into thanking them / introducing myself / asking for their background and letting them know I have some questions / jumping into questions I had prepared and trying to riff off of what they say / closing and ask for further connection / thanking them for their time

I always follow up with a thank you as well as updates for my older connections, I have even had second calls with some.

I feel like I have this whole thing down for the most part. My question is how do students do so many of these?  I constantly hear that if you do enough, the anxiety will dissipate. For me, they’re so mentally taxing I can literally feel myself balding due to stress, I even started minoxidil.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Just do more unfortunately or frame it differently or honestly stop taking calls with people you don’t want to talk to. Huge game changer when I went from dreading the call to wanting to actually talk to the person about their work or something I’ve read about and needed answers.

 

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