I have recently got my final grade in for my masters as a Merit in integrated crop management and want to either enter into research or start a PHD for next year. However, considering I also achieved a 2:2 in my degree I strongly suspect that I am going to have to put more elbow grease in to find myself a place, considering I have to gain funding from the student loan company minus the external support to get a place. Furthermore, I also just want peers to be able to talk about cool research, as reaserching whilst isolated means I am not getting as full of a picture as it would to contact people.

Therefore, I would like to start to network, but am unsure where start since, nobody in my family has any personal connections to research as we all are pretty much working class. So I would like some advice to get started, or if anyone here want to form a new contact feel free to do so. For networking I have thought up of the following goals:

1. To help assist others in research in any way I can, be it proofreading, adding an extra piece of critique. helping out with finding out information to act as a time saver or gain experience doing research, although if gaining experience with my very limited funds not being unemployment would most likely need to request if I can stay at theirs during that period of time gaining experience, where I would assist paying for additional costs in terms of bills and food.

2. Just gain someone to talk to about cool stuff in scientific research to help advanced each others knowledge bases as it will be a fun and enjoyable experience and I believe it essential to keep staying in the know and the more people I discuss science too the more broader both mine and the other persons knowledge becomes.

3. To find potential a mentor that may eventually become my main tutor for my PHD

4. To find potential job opportunities and gain inside information on different organisations and being able to better be able to prepare and understand what others want.

Feel free to critique these goals to, as I am really unsure whether or not these ideas are viable or not. Being autistic does not help much in respect of social interactions, so having people spell out to me as well whether or these are good ideas, will also help more than you may initially realise.

Anyway, I apologise for my habit of verbosity but also helps with other recent graduates when it comes to them working out this networking stuff and look forward to your responses and I thank all who read this post.