How students can stay in touch with professional contacts without it feeling transactional.
Many people avoid networking, or feel a quiet guilt around it, because it seems transactional, only reaching out to someone when you need something from them, but staying in touch does not have to feel that way if you approach it as genuinely maintaining a relationship rather than periodically extracting a favour from it.
What actually makes it feel, and be, genuine is reaching out sometimes with nothing to ask for at all, such as sharing something relevant to their interests, congratulating them on an achievement you noticed, or simply checking in without an agenda attached, since contact that is not always a request steadily builds real rapport over time. When you eventually do need something, that ask lands very differently coming from someone who has shown up occasionally without expecting anything back, compared to someone who only ever appears when they want something. Keep your outreach short and genuinely easy for the other person to respond to, since long, demanding, or effortful messages create quiet friction and often get postponed indefinitely.
Quality and timing matter far more than frequency here, and a handful of genuine, well-timed touchpoints spread across a year build a considerably stronger relationship than frequent but shallow contact ever does. It is also completely fine, and normal, for some professional relationships to stay light and occasional rather than becoming a close connection, since not every useful contact needs to deepen into something more.
Example: A student who occasionally sent a short, genuine note congratulating a former professor on a publication or achievement, with no ask attached at all, found that same professor genuinely glad to help months later when a recommendation letter was actually needed.
One practical tip: Reach out sometimes with nothing to ask for, a note of congratulations, a relevant article, a simple check-in, since contact that is not always a request is what makes networking feel, and actually be, genuine rather than transactional.