Adventurous people know that while the internet is awesome, it’s also fundamentally limited. Sometimes there are things that you just can’t learn online (or from a book)—you have you talk to a real life, flesh-and-blood human.
Let’s say you want to become a professional artist. How do you do this? Some books and online articles might shed light on the path, but they’re probably broad and vague. What would be more useful is to learn how how you (in your specific situation) might become a professional artist in your specific field of art in this specific geographic area. That’s the kind of knowledge that only another working artist might be able to provide—and that’s why it’s important to be able to reach out to real-life people.
This challenge has three parts:
1. Find someone who seems interesting (a stranger) and lives in the nearby area.
2. Reach out to that person via e-mail (or phone) ask ask them out for coffee.
3. Actually meet this person at a coffee shop, having a discussion, and learning something from them.
(If this sounds terribly intimidating, that’s good. It means you’re on the cusp of learning something really important. That being said, please be safe. Always meet in a public location. If you’re under 18, keep your parents in the loop during the entire challenge.)
For guidance, read these articles:
- 10 Tips for an Awesome Coffee Meeting
- Teens: How to Write Two Important Emails (see the second part, “How to Connect With an Interesting Stranger”)
- How to turn small talk into smart conversation
If run into a road block, ask any helpful adults in your life for advice. This is a fun challenge that people will be excited to help you complete.
Portfolio: To document completion, write a short blog post telling the story of your coffee date. Who did you choose and why? How did you contact them? Were you successful on the first try? How did the coffee date go? What did you talk about? What would you do differently next time? As a bonus, if your person is cool with it, get a picture of you two having coffee.
Examples:
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