Friday, March 11, 2011

Spring Forward

Daylight savings time starts this Sunday.  Hooray for longer (and hopefully warmer!) days.

Congratulations to the admitted class of 2013!  I look forward to meeting all of you at your Open House and hope everyone can make it.  I had a lot of fun getting to know my classmates last year and given how soon after admittance the program starts, it's a great way to make the transition to moving here a lot smoother.  I would say some of the highlights to look forward to are:
* meeting the admitted class
* getting to know the graduating class and the year above you
* figuring out housing
* dance parties (there always seems to be one when there are a group of LGOs around)

Picture taken during our apartment search at Open House.  View of Cambridge City Hall from our balcony.
Finding out about the new incoming class as well as finding out about our internships have definitely been the notable LGO events of the semester so far.  I'll be at Intel working for the Customer Manufacturing Enabling group in Santa Clara, CA.  I just had my initial conversation with my supervisor the other day, and he gave me an overview of the group and what potential projects I could focus on.  Although the project I'll be working on is still TBD, I'm definitely looking forward to my experience at Intel and the exposure I'll get in this industry.  I'm also excited to be back in California. :)

On another note, Spring semester has been pretty different from the Fall.  I'm not as involved in as many extracurriculars this semester so I've been able to focus a lot more time on my classes, which is a good thing because I am taking two time consuming engineering classes.  The two I'm taking are 6.555 Biomedical Signal and Image Processing and 6.541 Speech Communication.  The first class, which fulfills my design requirement, is a good mix between theory and application.  So far in labs one and two, we've learned how to process ECG signals and speech signals.  The 2nd lab ties in really well with my other engineering class where we are learning about how speech is produced and the different sources that affect it.  If you're wondering how that is related to EE, we are studying the frequency/amplitude/time variant characteristics that result from varying speech pressures, constrictions, and velocities, which can also be expressed through equivalent circuit models.  The other classes I'm taking this semester include:
15.900 Competitive Strategy (this is an H1 class so it just ended today)
15.910 Innovation Strategy (H2 class starts after Spring Break)
15.401 Finance I (can't speak for the remaining of the semester, but I think they've been a lot easier on us this semester than they were to the finance sections last semester)
15.846 Branding (H2 class)
15.792 LGO Prosem
ESD.941 Tiger Teams (working on a logistics project for a thermal packaging company)

Next week is SIP week.  I'm signed up for ES.513 Design Inspired Innovation.  We don't have any Sloan classes during SIP, which is really nice because I have two midterms and a lab due for my engineering classes.  Should be a busy week before we're off for Spring Break!