A good thing to do on a summer night

On Tuesday night I went to a concert at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston.  It's very close to the water and easily accessible by the T.  The Pavilion is basically a giant tent that seats 5000 people.  It's open to the warm summer air and so it's great to go hear some music, see the sky change color as the sun sets and to feel the air get cooler as night descends.

For this particular show, I went to see Parachute and Michelle Branch open for the Goo Goo Dolls.  Overall, the concert wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be, but the Goo Goo Dolls are a band I've been interested in seeing live for a while and now that curiosity has been satisified.  They were good and it was nice to hear many of their familiar hits.  They did, however, also play songs from their CD that came out last summer, too, so this wasn't a total washed-up tour, but the biggest audience reaction was from the classic favorites.

One of the problems with playing the old and new songs together was that, to generalize, the old songs are harder punkier rock whereas the newer ones are more acoustic alternative radio listening so it made for a sort of bi-polar set list.  Besides the occasionally strange song juxtaposition, I guess it just felt like some extra spark was missing compared to other bands I've seen.  As I said before though, I'm still glad I saw them.

Summers to me recently have begged for a concert or two, especially ones at venues where you can enjoy the weather at the same time.  Last summer, in Michigan, I saw Colbie Caillat and Sheryl Crow at an open air venue and that was fun.  Getting a ticket last minute on Craigslist for $15 made it even better.  Alternatively, I also saw the Scorpions that summer, so don't go making too many generalizations about my music tastes...even I've tried and it's pretty hard...

As far as summer, it has been incredibly warm here this week and a bunch of last week, too.  Boston, yes, is usually humid during the summer, but I don't know if there's been this long of a spell that has been this hot in quite a while.  Today (Friday) the high is supposed to be 99F.  I wonder if we'll make it into the triple digits or not.  It seems as if we're certainly not alone in the heat department though; on Facebook, a Detroit radio station posted that it hit 100 there for the first time in fifteen years on Thursday.  Wow.



P.S.
There won't be many photos on the blog until I get another camera.  I accidentally knocked mine off of a table here at Sloan and turned it into a camera shaped paperweight.  Does anyone have recommendations for inexpensive but good digital cameras?  I've been looking at the Panasonic Lumix series...

Team 7 Satellite Office

This weekend, Team 7 spent a day and a half on the south coast of Massachusetts, chilling out by the pool and on the beach and...reading Copenhagen and discussing a little stats.  Yes, we did some work.  But that wasn't our priority.  Priority #1 was taking some time to get our group and SOs together for a short break in the middle of our summer term.  It was GOOD.  LGO, can you just forward our mail here? :-)

Joint Venture: China LGO and LGO Meeting and Sharing

Background: LGO has a sister program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University that was started in 2007.  It is referred to as CLGO and is also focused on manufacturing and operations.  CLGO students visit LGO every summer and, every other spring, the LGOs go to China during their International Plant Trek.

This year, at the beginning of July, almost 30 CLGO students came to the United States to tour east coast cities (they visited Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York) and visit MIT.  Before Boston, the CLGOs had their own tour guides, but once they got to Boston and Cambridge, we were their hosts.

We had a welcome event at the sailing pavilion with introductions.  There, we first got to speak with the CLGOs in depth.  Their English is very good - they said that the cases they read for class are the same ones we do.  Even though the cases are written in English (which is definitely impressive), the class discussion is still usually in Chinese.  We shared dinner and they presented us each with a lovely gift - a business card case and key ring set with traditional chinese designs.

Meet and greet and gift sharing at the Sailing Pavilion

The CLGOs also came to a number of our classes and saw how we learned about leadership, lean/six sigma principles and high velocity organizations.  The Lean/Six Sigma class was probably the most interactive because were were doing our airplane building simluations.

Siwen (Sterling), Si (Steve) and Sam work on lego organization

The CLGO synergy committee, made up of LGO students, did a great job at planning meals and activities for our Chinese guests, many of which we could also attend.  I had an Italian dinner in Boston's North End with CLGO students on Friday night (helping decode the menu and choose representative Italian dishes for them to try) and went on a Whale Watch out of Boston Harbor with them on Sunday.  We saw many humpback whales that afternoon, feeding and diving all around the boat.

The group waiting on the docks to go on the whale watch

An awesome whale tail!!

Other activities we shared were many other meals and a trip to go berry picking a little outside of Boston.  We had received feedback from the previous year's visit that our Chinese guests wanted to see more non-city life, so berry picking seemed like a nice, sometimes literal, taste of nature!  During the berry trip, besides picking the fruit itself, the farm owners gave a tour of the processing facilities they had so we got some operations experience as well.

Talking about how things work on a farm

Transportation for the day



Xiaoming (Tina) looks really happy

Zach is also competing for the "really happy berry picker" prize.  He was the one who bought many pints of blueberries at Haymarket a week or two earlier...

The day was a tremendous success

The visit was informative for students from all countries.  I felt like I was able to learn a little more what actual life was like (the students with families reminded us that they just had one kid and couldn't have more) and how the US is really perceived (very independent rather than community oriented, ex. many Americans move away from home and into their own homes relatively early in life). We got to share things as well such as "No, there are no outlet malls accessible via subway."

But seriously, we shared America with the CLGOs by answering many questions, besides just where they could get "good stuff cheap."  Although, yes, the CLGO students wanted to buy luxury brands for people back home since things like Coach purses are less expensive here than they are in China, they also came to group events excited to see us again and get to share more experiences.  We talked about everything: from habits in class to the American police heirarchy (local/state/national) after we saw some cops on the street after we left a restaurant. 

Overall, they CLGOs were very congenial and eager, open to trying all sorts of foods (though some types were definitely preferred more than others, Mexican did not seem to be popular) and doing all sorts of things. They were very courteous and thoughtful, too (I was offered a seat on the subway multiple times, one got me a drink at the welcome party, etc.).

At our farewell dinner, rather than say goodbye, the CLGOs said "Welcome to China!".  I thought that this was a nice way to finish because it spoke of another beginning rather than just an ending.  I would like to go on the international plant trek next spring and am looking forward to seeing them again soon.

I hope this can be us sitting together on the other side of the world next time

Back to go forward

While I'm organizing pictures from the CLGO visit to go with my official long post, I'll share another shorter and sillier event that happened earlier this month.

For our leadership class, we watched most of the film '12 Angry Men'.  In it, 12 men are jurors for a murder trial and basically all of the movie is shot in the room where they're trying to decide if the person is innocent or guilty.  Summary: lots of evidence of different leadership and communication styles appears and then we talked about it.

So, a core group of people decided that, shortly thereafter, we should wear polos and ties (if we had them) to leadership class in reference to the movie.  Most people participated, however, Jan Klein our professor didn't immediately notice.  Thinking about one of my previous posts, most of the guys wear collared shirts anyway and so our professor had no real reason to think that much was unusual.  She probably just didn't know what to think about the ties.  Since our plan wasn't obvious to the person who had shown us the movie, we ended up having to explain our scheme.  It didn't seem as clever then, however, it was still fun and it gave us an excuse to take another class photo.  Hi world!

More like 50 not so angry men and women

Old and New

Building E60 reflected in building E62

I really like this picture I took during one of our study group meetings in the newest Sloan Building, E62.  This building, just dedicated in May 2011, has many study rooms, meant specifically for group work, outfitted with whiteboards and computer monitors (the low tech and high tech ways to share ideas). 

Since, over the summer, we do the majority of our assignments with our LGO teammates, we spend time after class often in spaces like this.  I just thought the view was appropriate.  The building reflected in the window is probably at least 75 years older than Sloan's newest acquisition and it's cool to think of the people who went here decades ago before there were things like the internet and computers and whiteboards and...  ....it must have been very different.

July 4th! (Wow, it's July!)

Yesterday many of us set aside the afternoon to carry on an LGO tradition.  BBQ and relaxing at the MIT sailing pavilion up until the Boston Pops Concert and "Fireworks Spectacular".  The MIT sailing pavilion is right on the Charles River, almost exactly in front of the barge where they shoot off the fireworks (yay unobstructed view!), and they have grills where you can cook.  Students and SOs started coming around 2-2:30 and we ate and drank, talked and played games...for hours and hours...but time went by pretty quickly.  The day was hot (mid-80s), but by 4 or 5 the sun started going behind a few taller buildings and some clouds gathered.  There was threat of rain, but none actually came down, which was great.  Instead the breeze picked up and made things even more pleasant.

Sun still high and hot over a 4PM not-as-crowded-as-I-expected Sailing Pavilion, you can see we were literally right on the river

By 8PM though, the sailing pavilion was packed, both with LGOs and other MIT students and friends
(Sorry about the candid, guys!)

A great spot for sailing and grilling

Leading up to the concert they had lots of smaller patroitic things going on.

They shot off canons on the Boston side of the river, hence all the white smoke

Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam and other American icons went boating past

The top of the Prudential Center was decked out in Red, White and Blue lighting
(same building that did MIT 150 in its windows)

They had a jet flyover (sorry, I don't know what kind)

The concert started at 8PM with patriotic music and sing-alongs.  Our international friends might not have known what to think of this whole display, but they seemed to enjoy themselves and take in the moment nonetheless.  They, along with us, noticed that just when everyone started singing, the flag at the pavilion started waving.  Awesome!

Representatives of Australia and Canada

Our high flying flag

At 10PM the local coverage went national, so we got to hear that transition.  The fireworks went from a little after 10:30 until 11PM. 

This was the giant barge where all the fireworks were launched from.  They synchronized the launches to music that played over speakers on both sides of the river.

Since many people took photos of the fireworks, I thought you might want to see some of our happy, in-awe faces instead.

Happily taking in the glow of the show

Happy, belated 4th everyone!  Hope Tuesday was manageable :-)

Class Stats

As we shift from probability to statistics, here are some less publicized stats about the LGO '13s.:
6% of LGOs have military experience
8% have at least one child (one was newly minted in June!)
10% have their pilot's license
10-15% have gotten sick in the first month
possibly due to getting
20-30% fewer hours of sleep than we're used to
50-60% - conservative estimate of LGO 13's with Significant Others
          (married, engaged, and other long term relationships)
70-80% of guys on a given day will wear a collared shirt to class (polo or button-up)
95% of summer classes are held in the same room : E51-315

I could have ended with something cheesy - 100% will find lifetime friends - but that will be up to life to determine.  Things are looking good though...

Notes and thanks

Today marked out last 15.064 (Engineering Probability and Statistics) class with Prof. Arnold "Arnie" Barnett.  He gave ten entertaining lectures on the chance we might listen and learn something.  To commemorate this event, here are a number of selections from the master himself that I jotted down along with my class notes:


~On conditional Probability
"If you don't believe that unicorns exist, you're not going to agonize about whether a unicorn drives a toyota corolla now will you?"

"There are probability problems that have for centuries remained unsolved; they will not be on the quiz."

"Amnesia, you may recall, no pun intended, is a lack of memory."

"It was actually on the board, but due to the curvature of the earth, you didn't see it."

~On the mean aka 'expected value' of a set of numbers
"An expected value would seem to be a value you'd expect, but you wouldn't toss a die and expect 3.5, now would you?"

"Are you with me? Arnie, in a dull voice immitating an apathetic student: 'No, I'm against you!'"

"Given that probability is an inherently exciting subject, more assignments should give you that much more happiness."

"Let us do something beautiful."

"I make plenty of mistakes on the board, but this time, accidentally, I got it right."

"I was looking for a picture of a railroad tunnel and the only one I was able to steal was of a tunnel in Australia.  [shows us normal looking photo of a railroad tunnel] Given that it's in Australia, you might think it's upside down..."

And the [online distribution calculator] will ask...
"My child, what is the mean of your curve?  What is your sigma, and what would you like to know?"

Again, a discussion between Arnie and his internal apathetic student voice:
"That's the only proof for today."
"That's one too many"
"Oh, stop it!"

"I'm not going to go through algebra on the board.  Some of you will find it boring.  All of us will find it tragic."

~On a probability distribution he had just written out:
"Does this have a mean of 150?  If you think so, then you partied too late!"

~On career moves
"Later on if you work as a consultant, you can't just say, 'I worked out the mathematics.' They won't trust you."

~On why he can't know the temp at a certain time in Singapore or Boston (parts of an example problem):
"I'm at the north pole trying to find penguins who might be customers for my book"
(Sorry Arnie, but I think the penguins are in the south pole.  If you head north you'll have to look for literate polar bears or seals or something.)

"You might say, 'This is a graduate course - are you going to teach us anything?'"

"Actually, what I just said was wrong, but I couldn't understand it either."

"In the end we are all normal, which is kind of odd for me to say."

"Isn't that amazing?  The correct answer is yes."


Thank you Arnie for teaching a class where P(you would say something witty) was high and uniformly distributed.  We learned a lot and appreciated your approach.  It was amazing.  The answer is YES.  Thanks again!

Work* aka Some fun things having nothing to do with class

I titled this post work*, since * notation in probability means "everything but the thing that has the star next to it".  That is the last that I will speak of classes and class related things in this post.

Tonight, I did three new things.
1. I finally went into the Women's Lounge (the Margaret Cheney Room) in Building 3.  I knew about it as an undergrad but didn't know how to get access, finally found out and went in and it's nice to know that the space is there.  All female students need to do is email the Student Activities Office, have their ID card activated and then they have 24/7 access as long as they are a student.

It's a quiet, completely safe space and was actually started back in 1882 in honor of Margaret Cheney (a MIT graduate of that year).  So, the Cheney room actually had to make to move with the rest of campus when MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge.  FYI, MIT, unlike Harvard or Columbia or a number of other top schools, was never all-male. It had its first female graduate in 1873.  I'm going to try and add in general MIT history, facts, trivia, etc. to give you a sense of this place beyond just the business school itself.

2. I saw The Adjustment Bureau featuring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in 26-100 (one of the largest lecture halls on campus).  LSC, the Lecture Series Committe, usually puts on two movies a week during the school year for $4.  Over the summer, though, their policy is to pick one movie to show every other week, but to show it for free - six films are being shown now though August.  So, tonight, I was occupied from 8-10PM watching a free movie.  The only thing bad about this set-up is that the seats in 26-100 are uncushioned which makes sitting through a 2 hour movie somewhat less pleasant.  Despite the non-ideal seating, 26-100 though is the traditional location for all LSC movies, both over the summer and during the year.

3. When I left the movie tonight with some friends, one of them reminded me that the Cambridge Dance Party was tonight.  One subway stop north of campus around Central Square, the city closed a block or so of Massachusetts Avenue (the main NS thoroughfare through Cambridge which also splits MIT in half) set up lights and a DJ and gave citizens four hours tonight to get out and party.  See the photos below for more details of the awesome-ness.

How often do you see a traffic notification sign like this?!? :-)

The official party sign in front of City Hall



The party as you looked "up" Mass Ave (towards Harvard).  City Hall is on the right.

Looking across Mass Ave from one sidewalk to another - The block was pretty packed!
(By the way, the Post Office is the grey/white building in the background)

Simulations

So for a number of our classes we've done simulations to demonstrate concepts we're talking about.  I've found these really helpful in getting us interested, keeping us awake, and engaging with the material on a deeper level than I'm sure we would have otherwise.

In ESD.930, our Lean Six Sigma module, we've been simulating putting together lego planes; in 15.761 Operations Management we played the "beer game" (which involved no beer, just a simulation of shipping cases of beer), and in ESD.60 today we've been working on a paper airplane assembly line.  In the break in between the two paper airplane sessions, people have been throwing them around the room (how could you not??).

My biggest takeaway from these simulations so far is from ESD.60 - stick to the plan for a certain length of time, then stop and revise.  Rather than firefighting mid-stream, it's better to work in a pre-determined way for a certain length of time to see most accurately where problems occur.  Professor Spear phrased it as "stick to the process with absolute discipline...temporarily."  If people break role to help even things out, it's much harder to find out what's really wrong.  You can modify roles after that first trial run.

After identifying the 12 steps in making the four different types of paper airplanes we were tasked to make, we distributed those steps amongst the five people in our team.  Turns out that first distribution of steps created a distinct bottleneck during wing folding, so, for the following round, we decided to change that.  We also wanted to improve the material handoffs and plane tracking so people knew which one they were working on (we had to make 18 min five minutes - none of the 11 teams succeeded in the first two rounds).  In the third round, after making multiple changes and labeling the planes with what each station needed to do, we were able to complete 14 planes.  Some teams even got to 18, when, in the first round, no one had successfully completed more than nine.

Later in the class we also talked about the concept of viewing employees as a commodity that can be "bought" and "sold"/"returned" and "repurchased" again versus a scarce resource of trained people who know about processes and how to improve them.  There it all depends on company culture which is a bit of another story.

OK, paper airplanes are done - after lunch we'll get back to Lego airplanes and I'll get back to this later.

And it begins

Only three weeks in to classes and we spent 7+ hours after class working on one assignment which we still haven't finished yet.  There was some time spent socializing and eating dinner, but it was mostly focused on trying to get probability done.  If I didn't like the prof as much as I do, I would have more trouble finding it to be worth it.  I left the LGO office around 10PM tonight and we'll need to work on things more tomorrow.  I knew it was going to be a challenge, but somehow I still wasn't that worried coming into the program.  Now it's appearing to be harder than I exected.  D'oh!

In a week or two we're going to have to map out the classes we think we want to take for all the two years and to commit to our concentrations - Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Systems Division (in other places known as Industrial Engineering), Electrical Engineering, Aero/Astro, Chemical and Civil Engineering.  I found out today that both the course load in terms of credits and the funding for the program are really 2/3 Sloan and 1/3 Engineering.  We need to take 120 Sloan units (regular classes are usually 9-12 units) and 66 engineering units to graduate.  That makes me kind of sad.  I wish it were more 50-50.

When I was reading the blogs of the current students when I was applying, I thought to myself, "Wow, they don't post very much.  If I do this, I've blogged before and I'm sure I'll post more.  It will be fun."  The truth is that I do enjoy it and it is in a way fun, but it's so much more easy to accomplish when you have time on your hands, which LGO is so good at helping you get rid of.  I won't have four posts per year or anything, but I think, sadly, things may end up being closer to four posts per month rather than per week.  Hopefully it will still be informative.

Other news...it's good to be a Bostonian because the Boston Bruins (NHL) won the Stanley Cup last week in Game 7.  I got to hear cheers and car horns right outside my apartment after the game.  That was fun.  I've been in town now for two Red Sox world series championships (2004 and 2007), the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2005 when I was in college and the Celtics won just after I finished undergrad in 2008.  Now the Bruins complete the set!  If the Red Wings couldn't win (I lived in Michigan before this and that's when I first started watching Hockey, so they're my "home" team), then the Bruins are my next choice since MA is where I grew up.

Team 7

Earlier I had meant to write more about our first days of the program after The Universe Within, but there were almost so many things to say, I didn't know where to start.  Now I'll try and get back to that a little...

Besides our classes, quite soon after arriving we all got into business attire and had our group and individual photos taken.  These will be used in promotional materials, will be hung on the wall of our program office and will also be printed along with our resumes in a class photo/info book available to staff as well as partner companies.  We had to look good.  So, while we all were so snazzy looking, I had someone snap a couple of our team.  Here they are:

Team Seven looking like we're the group you'd like to hire...

And Team 7 being Goofy (we're all doing a 7 with our hands in some way or another...at least we're trying to)

We stayed in this and other intermediate business attire (business casual, not suits) our first full week when we met with partner companies.  We've already had a workshop with Cisco, some people went to a presentation by Dell, we've been given a case study by Caterpillar and we met many different company reps at the LGO Governing Board reception.  I still find it amazing how all these high-powered capable people show up and want to talk to us.  Eventually, though, I think we'll either get used to it and or accept it and take on the role that they'd like us to grow and join them someday.  You can't sit around saying other people are awesome all the time.  You need to step up and command some awesome-ness yourself.

On our way to being awesome, we've got to do some work though, so today I got a candid of us working on some of our problem sets (I think we're just wrapping up).  Assignments have finally started to come due this week so now we're getting more into the swing of things.  The LGO office is great in that they have small breakout/group study rooms with big monitors (if you want to share what's on your computer) and whiteboards to scribble on.  This is a photo of us in one of those rooms.

Working together on 15.066 HW (Optimization, here done with spreadsheets)

Speaking of working together, on Monday night, the hockey/probability party exceeded my expectations and, despite odds to the contrary, we both got work done and enjoyed the hockey game.  Yay!

Tonight, after some of us stuck around the office to do work individually, we had a spontaneous dinner outing with half the team tonight (Team 1/2? Team 3/6?).  We went to explore a few places close to but not right at campus.  We had Middle Eastern food for dinner and then grabbed bubble tea at a place next door.  Bubble tea is an Asian drink often served cold (milk and tea or just tea, often flavored) with tapioca balls (bubbles) in it.  You drink it through a giant straw so you can suck up the bubbles at the same time.  It's kind of odd, but rather tasty and fun to do every once in a while.  These were two places I had not been to when I was at MIT before, so it was fun to continue exploring.

Before I forget the details...

Here's a little bit of information about my commute for the summer from home to LGO.  I live in Porter Square which is on the Red Line (the one with direct access to MIT (and Harvard)).  I feel incredibly fortunate in that I am not only very close to the stop itself, but I am right across from a large, chain grocery store, Shaws, which is something rarer to find in the city.

So, how to get to school in a little more detail...

You can see the funky wind sculpture thing (three red metal sails) on the roof of the station.  That's at the end of my street :-)

So getting to the station itself is not a big deal.  Living near a subway as opposed to taking the bus to school or walking is that, if you have to wait, at least on the Red Line, you always do so INDOORS.  No rain, no snow and it's just about always warmer down there.  When I went to MIT as an undergrad I always felt like Porter was another world away, but really it's no big deal.  In the fall, hopefully I can tell you that MIT grad housing is no big deal, either.

Porter is a subway stop, however, that is especially, literally "down there".  You have to do some serious climbing to get in or out.  Take these photos below...

The first escalator, this one (climbing back up at a moderate but not hurried pace) is ~30 steps.

At the first level change there is one escalator going up, one going down and a set of stairs in the middle.  Most people seem to split the difference and walk up or down the escalator.  I try and do the same.

Escalator #2

The second escalator not only is twice as long...~60 steps climbing the escalator at a moderate pace, but it is wider and so somehow feels even more steep and precarious.  This set is past the point where you pay for the subway and is three escalators wide with two sets of stairs.  Again, most people climb the escalator.  Just standing there takes too long, but going up each and every step with no help is more than people want to do at the very beginning or end of their workday.

Three stops to get from Porter to Kendall/MIT

If you're a normal person, you ride the T, but if you're sneaky, observant and/or smart, eventually you learn which end of the platform to stand on to get off closest to where you need to go.  For coming to MIT/Sloan, I always try and stand near the front of the train because that let's me off closest to the exit near the business school.

This whole thing reminds me of the freshmen seminar I took called "You Can Get There From Here."  As long as you wake up early enough, it's pretty true.

Classes and Committees

We've now completed our 5th day of class after the leadership module The Universe Within concluded.  In those five days we've had sessions for:

15.064 Engineering Probability and Statistics
Turns out this is our most hilarious class so far...no joke.  I will post quotes soon :-)

15.066 Systems Optimization
(aka linear programming plus a few more advanced things)
Looks like it will be very applicable to real company issues and might be useful for an internship - how to make the most of what you've got of minimize costs of making/buying what you don't.

15.317 Organizational Leadership and Change
Our first session was three hours back to back.  I think all of us understand that this will be valuable, but it's hard to go for that long talking about it in theory.  I spoke with a number of people who'd rather less class time and them maybe report about how we're doing for real in our committee and team meetings.  Jury is out on how it will go.

ESD.60 High Velocity Organizations
Makes sense to see examples of what and how companies or other types of organizations do well and also to identify what is "wrong" - we talked today about the importance of not normalizing deviance.

We're still waiting to have a class for ESD.930 Module on Lean 6-Sigma Methods, but that will be tomorrow.  ESD.930 and The Universe Within are referred to as modules, I guess, because they are not full credit classes.  In total, this summer, we will take six differently named courses with the total work load of around five classes.  That's still plenty to do.

In addition to our work for classes, last Friday, the 10th, we signed up for the committees that we will be a part of this year.  Students are representatives on committees ranging from recruiting new students and partner companies to planning our "plant treks" (a series of company visits we will do in January and over spring break) and facilitating visits with CLGO (our Chinese program counterpart - you think American universities are competitve - just think about a country of 1 billion people - these students are top notch).  They told us that we can sign up for as many as we'd like but that we'll probably significantly contribute our time to two of them.  They waste no time in getting us going.  I have not had any committee meetings yet, though.  Probably will have them soon.

The Committees I've signed up for are:

New Student Recruiting
Getting a quality group of students to apply to the Class of 2014 and beyond, we'll be blogging, and setting up events I enjoyed like Ambassador Day in the fall for students to meet people in person and find out more about the program, InterviewFest, when the first round of callbacks occurs in the application process and Open House after everyone knows whether they've been admitted or not.  We'll be running these events and making presentations and being incoming students' points of contact.

Communications
Very closely tied to new student recruiting, they work on not only getting the word out about LGO to potential applicants but also to other schools, companies, etc.

New Partners
Working with the program staff to contact other companies who we'd like to become partners.  Partners sponsor internships, offer employment after graduation and visit us periodically to present cases and get to know us.  More partner companies can enable us to have a greater range of internships, and related to that a possible greater diversity or number of admitted students.  Also, some partner companies have been with us forever, but others have come and gone so we always need to be ready to fill gaps as needed.


I'm looking forward to seeing how this all plays out, but right now waking up around 6:15, getting to Sloan by 7:45 to start class at 8 and go til 2:30+ to possibly go to a committee meeting or a partner company reception to go home and do homework and maybe eat or sleep or something is a long day.  My goal, if I'm waking up that early, is to be in bed around 10:30 or 11, but it's hard sometimes.  Tonight some of our summer team (yeah Team 7!) is going to have a probability/hockey party and try and do work while watching the Bruins vs. the Canucks in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup.  I don't exactly know the odds of how much work we'll get done, but I'm sure it will be fun.

Weekend outing

So much has happened this past week that it's been hard to keep up with all the details.  My next anecdote will be less LGO related and more MIT related.  For my particular sublet, I ended up living with two other MIT alumni - one who is now there for grad school and another who is working in the area.  We did not know each other while we were here even though all of us graduated undergrad in 2008; we met just through their listing for a sublet on Craigslist.

On Sunday (6/5) it was one of my roommate's birthdays and so the other '08 and I met her and some of her friends for Ethiopian/Eritrean food at Asmara restaurant in Cambridge.  What's distinctive about Ethiopian food is that it is served on this thin, bubbly, quite sour bread and is eaten with your hands by pinching the bread around the meat or vegetables you are eating.  This is a place where you definitely use your napkin!

I had Ethiopian food once before, and hadn't been too crazy about it.  I went with some people to a place in Boston that took forever to get to and where the sour-ness of the bread overpowered the other flavors of what we were eating.  Needless to say, I was not a fan. So, this past weekend, I had my reservations, but I thought I'd give it a second chance and that, at a minimum, meeting other people's friends and expanding my circle would be good.

Turns out some of this girl's friends live in Tang Hall where I'll be living during the fall AND that, upon a second try, I like Ethiopian food, at least from this place.  The stews and vegetables and meat were spiced sort of like Indian food (Ethiopia is on the Eastern coast of Africa, right by the horn, so it makes sense that there would be some similarities) and the bread wasn't as overpowering as before.  Overall we had both satisfying food and conversation.  Dessert of ice cream birthday cake at Toscanini's afterwards definitely didn't hurt though!

I ended up getting home on Sunday a little later than I expected, but it was tasty and definitely worth it.  I'm happy that I changed my attitude about this food that's pretty new to me and that I got to meet new people.  LGO is great, but one of the things that I see as something I want to keep in the back of my mind is to build connections with the general MIT graduate community.  Living in a dorm in the fall and talking more to this girl's friend is definitely a way to help me do that.

I wish I had pictures

Day 1 of the program was last Wednesday and, after class, about a third of us decided to go have dinner and drinks together to celebrate the beginning of what I'm sure will be an awesome two years together.  What made the evening notable though was how the weather progressed.

We had watched a movie that afternoon in the Universe Within, so the shades were down in the classroom.  We heard one large BOOM outside but nothing else and presumed it was a short/passing thunderstorm.  After class it was overcast but not very threatening when we headed to dinner.  However, by the time we made it to a nearby bar in Central Square to watch Game 1 of the Stanley Cup, the sky had gotten pitch black.  After we got our drinks, people near the windows were peering out and pointing so I went out onto the sidewalk to see giant chains of lightning all over the sky.  It was spectacular.  The hockey game was then interrupted for a severe weather alert where we were shown scenes of tornadoes touching down in Western Massachusetts and the weatherman standing next to a deep maroon radar screen.

The lightning by itself was dramatic, but we closed the door to the sidewalk once it began to rain sideways.  The satellite signal for the TV reception went in and out about three times, causing the patrons in the bar to alternately cheer and groan.  Some LGOs has left already and others, thinking it was going to get worse, braved the rain (getting soaked on the way home).  I stayed until the beginning of the third period and turns out by then it was basically done raining so, except for some giant puddles, my trip home was OK.

As I wrote, the tornadoes were in the western half of the state and a number were confirmed to have touched down.  Nothing major other than than the thunder and rain happened in Boston but it was still really amazing weather to witness.  Like the snow that the incoming '13s saw at the admissions days this spring, the thunderstorm was definitely of greater magnitude and intensity than what we normally get in Massachusetts.  The only conclusion I can arrive at is that our class will be... A force of nature!

Backtrack of sorts to "The Universe Within"

The LGO class of 2013 officially began their time together on Wednesday June 1st when we assembled for our first class "The Universe Within".  This is a week-long module taught by Jon Carroll, who went to MIT for undergrad, studied physics and was on the varsity fencing team (fun facts I found from the MIT alumni dircetory webpage).  His position now is a professor at Sloan focusing on behavior and policy science, specifically with regards to safety.

He's been really nice, enthusiastic and funny and we've done lots of exercises as a class and in our summer teams to understand what makes a good leader, a good team and how we can best work together and listen to each other.  I'm slightly confused as to why this week-long module is called The Universe Within if so much of it has to deal with how you interract with other people, but I'll go with it.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent on campus doing these class and group exercises.  We found out our teams that we'll be working with all summer.  For the class of 2013, there are 50 students, 15 of whom are women, and 8 teams.  I am on Team 7, which has two women and which we've at least temporarily called "Where is Number 7?" because we're a team with only six people on it (only two of the teams have seven members).  I'm happy with my teammates and look forward to finding out how to best work together to conquer the six classes we're taking this summer.

On Friday the 3rd, we woke up extra early and met at Sloan to spend a day out on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor doing Outward Bound activities.  On the island we did group challenges, low ropes course elements and finished the afternoon with challenging ourselves on various higher elements like a climbing wall.  We built trust, confidence and strengthened the abillity to rely on these people we'd known for less than a week.  It was impressive.  We all had the same goals, got to work and did it.  On the way home, we got together for a great photo with Boston harbor and some of the skyline in the background.



A happy LGO class of 2013

The Universe Within module continues through next Tuesday the 7th, and then on Wednesday the 8th, we will meet new professors and begin the classes that will take us through the rest of the summer.

MIT150 - Inventional Wisdom

I will discuss the first few days of class soon (we began on 6/1), but I'm instead going to write about MIT's 150th for a little while, since the finale event, Toast to Tech, was tonight.  MIT was founded in 1861 by William Barton Rogers.  He was also its first president.  To honor its sesquicentennial anniversary, MIT had 150 days of events which included a special exhibit of 150 objects at the MIT museum, an open house to the general public, six colloquiums, the dedication of the new Sloan building, a festival of arts, science and technology (FAST) and global alumni gatherings.

Party in Killian Court in front of Building 10 (with the Great Dome)

Tonight, for Toast to Tech, MIT hosted a party with music, drinks, dancing, cake and fireworks to celebrate the end of those 150 days (which happened to coincide with reunion weekend).  The fireworks went on for 15 minutes over the Charles River, music from many decades was played and everyone was served cake from a giant 750 pound cake shaped like buildings of MIT.  The same bakery had also made 1000 cupcakes for the event.

MIT Campus Cake with a Cupcake Charles River

A skyscraper across the river (The Prudential Center) also had written MIT 150 on it via turning lights on only in certain rooms.  It was very cool and a great way to cap off what has been a busy and amazing year for the institute.

MIT 150 written in the lights of the Prudential Center across the river in Boston

Even though as LGO students we've only started out time as MIT graduate students, we've already gotten a chance to have some fun with the general community and alums.

Incoming!

Since my family is still in Massachusetts, I was lucky enough to leave work early in May and then move home for a few weeks before coming to Cambridge.  I was excited to return to Cambridge and MIT to start LGO, but one of MIT's big weaknesses is dealing with grad students who don't start in the fall.  I wasn't worried about classes and my classmates this spring, I was worried about housing.

Housing is the primary weakness of this program.  I will explain...

ON-CAMPUS
Cons: If you want to live on-campus, you enter a lottery for a FALL assignment (you'll only know if you got one at the end of May) and in the meantime you have to find a summer sublet, either on or off-campus.  Unless you get a sublet before you find out your fall assignment and then those two buildings happen to match, you'll be moving during the break between summer and fall classes.  Just plan on it.  Also, you cannot have your furry friends live with you.

Pros: You can get furnished housing if you're single, if you're married and lucky you could live in a building literally right next to sloan.  Whether you're married or single, MIT shuttles run past all the dorms from 6AM to 2AM and the housing office allows you to break you lease at any time if you have an academic reason (like our internship) with little penalty.

OFF-CAMPUS
Cons: Leasing becomes both easier and harder with this option.  It will probably be harder and more costly to break a lease, you will be further from campus and won't have shuttles.  You'll need to arrange for LGO roommates over the course of two days during the admitted student open house weekend, pay a premium to live by yourself, or end up with random roommates.  You might not have A/C in the summer (if that matters to you)...yes Boston/Cambridge is in the northeast but it can still get humid and hot sometimes.

Pros: You can live in the same place summer and fall (no move in August), you can get more space (especially if you live further from campus).  If you sublet your place during your internship you may not have to move much at all.  You can find a place that allows your pets, though those are still harder to find in Cambridge than people would like.  The one good thing about starting in June is that if you do want to buy furniture when you get here, there's lots on Craigslist since most other people are moving out.

CONFESSION/NERD ALERT
In order to figure out what my best course of action was for housing, earlier this spring, I opened up Visio and drew some flowcharts.  That helped, but starting school in June makes things a mess.

I, personally, ended up with a furnished summer sublet right by the T (name for Boston subway) and then will be moving to on-campus furnished housing in the fall.  I've got that extra move, but, overall am happy with my decision.

An Introduction

Hi!  So you know whose perspective you're reading from, I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Victoria, I grew up in Massachusetts and lived in Michigan for three years after graduating from college.  My family has been in the US kind of forever and I am fluent only in English.  For my undergraduate degree I studied architecture at MIT.  After college, in Michigan, I worked at an architecture firm reviewing in-house drawings, and information sent to us by consultants, and then I worked at a class III medical device company in their manufacturing engineering department.  There, I performed process qualifications and improvements, and did lots of technical writing as well.

I found out about LGO from an email.  It was not sent to my MIT one and I had taken the GRE while I was in college, so I don't know how or why I got it at the time, but it turned out to be very fortuitous.  Here I am today.  In the fall, I will write more about the admissions process so that future classes can receive the information when they're thinking about it the most - application time!

My interests lie in both product design and supply chain management and I will be choosing either a ESD or ME track for my engineering masters.  Hopefully this blog will prove useful and interesting and at least something in it will resonate with you.

Now...on with the program!