Has Meeting People and Forming Social Connections Been an Important Part of your Educational Experience? Why or Why Not?

Unequivocally, YES!

My educational experience offered me the opportunity to meet and interact with different people from different backgrounds. The beauty of this is it gave me a chance to form meaningful relationships with a diverse group of individuals, with each person bringing something special and unique to the table. This helped me ascertain various viewpoints and perspectives, and kept me current, like learning about a new show, band, or what’s hot in entertainment. And of course, opened me up to more worldly perspectives on what’s really going on in life. You definitely need to take advantage of this!

If you hang around with the same kind of people doing the same kind of things you could fall into an echo chamber. DON’T do that! You need to open yourself up to new ideas and experiences by meeting people and forming social connections while in school. When you improve your networks and spheres of influence, you increase opportunities to boost your knowledge, enhance your career, and overall expand your mind and perspective of life. My present network is made up of people in different career fields which gives me the chance to learn about their various jobs, what affects their industry, how they handle similar challenges to what I encounter in my own business, and so much more. And many of these contacts are individuals I met while in school.

Not only that, when you gain a better sense of different experiences and cultures you improve your empathy and ability to get along well with others. It’s a big domino effect—by being able to do this and connect on a deeper level, it has a positive impact on your physical health. Those with robust networks recover twice as fast from surgeries than those who don’t. And building relationships has been shown to combat feelings of loneliness, too. In fact, those with weak connections could see a reduction in their lifespan that’s equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, as stated by former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Now that’s something to think about!

This article originally appeared on Quora.