Two Little Tales and the Missing Link in my Chain

I enjoyed reading these two little tales by Mark Twain and found them to be quite clever. When the man tried to help his inventor friend out by sending a  letter directly to the director general, it took him 3 months to get as far as he did. In the beginning, he gets no response at all, and overtime manages to make little progress.

His friend just laughs at him and then tell him the story about the chimney-sweep. This story exemplifies how a chain of strong ties is more effective than a single long, weak tie. Tommy makes  a plan so that every node in that chain will tell their one best friend who is willing to do anything for them, and eventually the news about the watermelon successfully reaches the emperor.

Then, based on this the man who is trying to help his inventor friend see how foolish he was in trying to contact the director-general directly, especially since he “intimately knows the director-general’s nearest friend”. At first I thought it would be acceptable for him to try to contact the director-general directly  because of his ignorance of a better method, but now that we are told he knows someone close to him, I think him to be absolutely foolish. Here, I think that the strength of those short ties is extremely useful because the inventor’s friend is trying to get something done/initiate a change in something. In these cases, it is even more useful to rely on the strength/width of ties because the connected nodes must be willing to go out of their way to help you.

Throughout my life, I have learned the importance of making connections with people. Currently, I am in the process of looking for a co-op and have had no luck thus far. Granted, it has only been about a week and a half since resumes were sent out, but many of my peers have already gotten interviews and/or offers. And it is now that i am really kicking myself for not knowing enough pharmacy upperclassmen well because many of them are currently working at the hospitals I applied to/hospitals in general. Clearly, I need to increase the width of my ties with them. If I had a strong close tie, the chain would look something like this. me - close friend who works in a hospital - employer of the hospital, all which would lead me to a job since employers do ask their current employees if they know/recommend any of the applicants.