Happy Pi(e) Day!

Today, Sloan provided goodies over lunch.  Mi Pi was apple and it was pretty tasty.  This was a nice treat near the end of the last week before SIP (Sloan Innovation Period).  Pretty soon I'll be off to China and Japan!

Sloan's poster announcement

The spread - you could choose apple, cherry or blueberry

Mi Pi!

Go Tech!

Tonight MIT made it to the final four of the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball tournament by beating Franklin & Marshall College 69-54.  This is the first time ever that this has happened and it's pretty darn cool.  I know we're Division III and that's not as glamorous as Division I, but it still means something to get this far, especially considering that MIT does no sports recruiting.

In honor of the team's success, I'm posting MIT's cheer.  The only thing you need to know is that Tim (MIT backwards) the beaver is our mascot.  Why the beaver?  It's native to North America, is nature's engineer, is very industrious and is mostly nocturnal.  Without further ado, here it is:

I'm a beaver,
You're a beaver,
We are beavers all!
And when we get together,
We do the beaver call!

E to the u du dx,
E to the x dx!
Cosine secant tangent sine,
3.14159,
Integral, radical, mu, dv!
Slipstick, slide rule, M-I-T!
Go tech!

March - how did we get here already?

Three months from now I will be starting at GM.  It has been a little over nine months since this LGO adventure started and so much has happened.  Most recently, we received more information about internship logistics and thesis writing.  Eeek!  The 2012s are finishing up their theses as I write this and it's hard to believe I'll be filling their shoes a year from now.

In class, my idea to redesign a water fountain made it to the final 12 projects (out of over 100 to start with) in our product design class and so, for the rest of the semester I'll be working with six other people to make that happen.  Outside of class, I worked with another LGO, Jessica Lin, a PhD student from Harvard and an MBA from Babson in a healthcare case competition.  Even though the case competition was not as successful as our Product Design and Development class has been so far, I think I definitely still got a lot out of it.  Case competitions can sometimes be a good way to give yourself a crash course in something.  In our case, it was digital marketing (a company wanted to use these techniques to create a drug launch strategy).

Outside of class, I went to the South Asian C-Function tonight, which was a blast.  There was tasty Indian food, many people wore brightly colored clothes from the region and students danced and sang.  Hey 2014s, can we go to India for next year's International Plant Trek?  I'm not kidding on this one - a bunch of 2013s would like to do it :-)  Speaking of International Plant Trek, between that and my Lion Teams class, I will be in China and Japan for two weeks very soon.  I'm not sure how internet access (and security!) will work over there, so I might be posting about it all after the fact, but, trust me, there will be pictures and travelogues!

Besides March feeling like it came more quickly, it has continued the trend of ridiculously un-winter-y weather.  Today it hit 67 degrees (which is pretty much at if not breaking a record high temperature for this day of the year).  People were extra happy and many had lunch outside or decided to walk between buildings outdoors, rather than inside.  The photo below is real, it's not a "posed to look like we spend time outside" photo.  I can't say it happens regularly, but this is not promotional, people just went out to enjoy the sun.

Hanging out in front of E62, the newest Sloan Building, enjoying the warm weather

I hope the warm trend continues until spring when it's supposed to start getting warmer otherwise these poor flowers are going to be toast.  We've had snow as late as April before in Massachusetts.

Signs that spring has spung - little blue flowers by E62

Finally, in this festive mood I'm in, I'll post a LGO candid because it makes me smile.

Happy March everyone!