Great story. I think a lot of people would have a similar story if they cared to analyze their success a little more critically and be willing to give a little more credit to luck rather than their own efforts.
The other perspective of this is that luck is "hard work meets opportunity" or that "you make your own luck" or "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take".
There was a conscious choice made to go to a meet-up (networking) and going to a career fair (or conference or further meetups) where you could run into people you've networked with in the past. Without that choice, none of the downstream lucky events would have mattered. So you can acknowledge the role of luck in those uncontrollable downstream aspects (T-shirt, career fair meetup) while also acknowledging what OP's role in creating that situation.
You're not "unlucky" if you had decided to play video games instead of going to either the meetup or the career fair. You could be unlucky if you did both of those and the opportunity never arrived. The former is (bluntly) making excuses about somebodies lack of success.
Or you can just say that someone was lucky to not be born in a country where they're forced into military conscription as a child at which point everyone is back to being lucky. It's all a matter of what you decide to focus on and what perspective you bring into things looking forward or backwards.
There was a conscious choice made to go to a meet-up (networking) and going to a career fair (or conference or further meetups) where you could run into people you've networked with in the past. Without that choice, none of the downstream lucky events would have mattered. So you can acknowledge the role of luck in those uncontrollable downstream aspects (T-shirt, career fair meetup) while also acknowledging what OP's role in creating that situation.
You're not "unlucky" if you had decided to play video games instead of going to either the meetup or the career fair. You could be unlucky if you did both of those and the opportunity never arrived. The former is (bluntly) making excuses about somebodies lack of success.
Or you can just say that someone was lucky to not be born in a country where they're forced into military conscription as a child at which point everyone is back to being lucky. It's all a matter of what you decide to focus on and what perspective you bring into things looking forward or backwards.