Rounding Out 1st Year

I have officially (well, as of last month) survived my 1st year of LGO!  I wanted to post about my internship but before I wrote about that, I wanted to share about my experience in one particular class I took this past Spring semester.  

Thermal packaging system on right

For our ESD.941 Operations Lab course, we worked on a logistics project for Cold Chain Technologies, a thermal packaging company located in Holliston, MA.  More specifically, we looked into whether or not refurbishment would be viable for one of their passive refrigeration systems.  After our team had several discussions with Cold Chain's Larry Gordon, President, and Bob Bohne, VP and GM, and a few others in operations and sales, we gathered the data they had shared and came up with a pricing model, logistics model, and process flow for them.   The project ended up being really interesting.  I enjoyed working with the second years on my team and learning more about logistics and how to build an optimization model based on the inputs.  I would say overall, the project was a success--the scope was manageable, the people we worked with were very responsive, and our final recommendations were well received.  Below is the LGO Cold Chain team with the President and VP of Cold Chain.

Left to right: Mike Donahue (LGO '11), Me, Steve Wessels (LGO'11), Kacey Fetcho-Phillips (LGO '11),
Bob Bohne (VP, GM), Larry Gordon (President)

I am now living out in Mountain View, CA and commuting to Santa Clara for my internship with Intel.  My experience so far has been great.  My manager, an LGO 93' alum, and my supervisor have been very supportive in teaching me as much about the group and company as possible, and working with me to determine what project I will be working on over the next six months.  I've felt a lot of support beyond my group as well.  There are several LGO alums at Intel who have been very resourceful and have helped immensely with the transition.  

It feels wonderful to be back in California.  Outside of work, I've gotten the chance to reconnect with old high school and college friends, and spend more time with Sloanies who I didn't get to spend as much time with throughout the busy school year.  Should be a great summer out here and 6 months with Intel.  :)

  

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!

MediaTech Trek: Silicon Valley

A few others have already blogged about our LGO Domestic Plant Trek so I thought I'd write about another trek I went on in the first week of January - the MediaTech Trek.  Before I do though, I thought it would be worth sharing at least one picture from the Plant Trek:

Don checking out a Tesla at the Detroit Auto Show!

Outside one of the Google buildings

I was able to go on the MediaTech trek because I am a member of the Sloan MediaTech club and also because the Domestic Plant Trek started on the second week of January.  There were about 25-30 of us on the trek, and the companies we visited in Silicon Valley included: Intel, Zynga, Charles Schwab, Cisco, Google, Facebook, VMware, eBay, and LinkedIn.  It was great to get more of the Sloan perspective of a few of our partner companies, as well as learn about some companies and their cultures that were more on the startup end of their life cycle.  It was also very interesting to visit all of these companies and to hear about the opportunities available to MBA students in the tech space.  Operations roles were always presented as potential career tracks we could follow, but other positions in product management, strategy, and business development to name a few were well represented as well.

Me and Limor at Facebook

For a few of our visits, we integrated with some of the Sloan E&I folks who were also out in Silicon Valley for their E&I trek.  Also, on one of the nights, we went to an MIT Sloan alum reception that was held at the Computer History Museum (go figure) in Mountain View so we got to see the rest of the E&I group, some of the alums who spoke at the companies we visited, and other alums who were from the area.  Overall, I had a great time visiting the companies, seeing Silicon Valley for the first time, and hanging out with MediaTech people on this trek.  The Silicon Valley portion of the trek was from January 3 - 5th.  Most of the group went on to visit Seattle for the remainder of the week, but I went back to Boston to tie up loose ends for plant trek and to repack for weather ranging from 20 degrees to 85 degrees, which was definitely tricky.  After having a few weeks off in December, things ramped up pretty quickly with all of the treks, InternshipFest, and InterviewFest.

By the way, good luck to all of those who interviewed!!          

Looking Back on the Fall Semester

Even though it's already February, Happy New Year!  Actually, I guess it's appropriate to say according to the Lunar Calendar.  :)

Before posting on more recent events, I wanted to blog my two cents on the fall semester.  As you might have already read in several of the other bloggers' posts, there was a definite contrast between the summer and fall semester both socially and academically.  A lot of applicants I spoke to over the semester asked how it's possible that we earn two degrees in two years.  I will admit that it's not a walk in the park.  Although the perspectives vary from LGO to LGO, there are definitely challenges faced and certain trade-offs (both good and bad) that need to be balanced in this program.       

Time was easily my biggest constraint in the fall.  Between all of the classes I was taking and clubs and committees I was involved in, I definitely felt like I was spreading myself thin.  For the most part, although I didn't do the greatest job in branching out, I'm happy with the relationships I've built through Sloan (i.e. my core team and Marketlab team) so far.  Below is a picture of my core team.  I only ended up being in three classes with them, but overall, I had a positive experience working in such a diverse team.  Between the seven of us, we represented San Diego, NY, Boston, Washington (state), Indonesia, Korea, and Brazil!

Mediterranean Penguins: Steve, Chris, Caesar, me, Luiz, Janet, and Giuliana

Best of Both Worlds

There are a lot of ways to get involved in the Sloan community, and by a lot, I mean for every professional, personal, cultural, and recreational interest you have, it is highly likely that you will find some club or group that shares your interests.  Going into the fall, I was already involved in a few LGO committees but knew I wanted to take advantage of the club opportunities at Sloan.  Because I'm interested in high tech, I joined MediaTech and MoMIT (Mobile, Media, and Internet Technology) as well as the Marketing Club and Sloan Women in Management (SWIM).

That may seem like a lot of clubs, but I knew my involvement in most of them would be pretty minimal given everything else going on.  More than anything, I wanted to be a part of these communities (and email distributions) so that if there was an event of particular interest to me, I would have the option of going.  So far I'm glad I joined them, because I've already had the opportunity to attend networking events for each one of the clubs.  Another big perk is that they've allowed me to integrate with the Sloan community on a more personal basis.

Of the four, I am the most involved in the Marketing Club, which has a semester long marketing project that members can participate in called MarketLab.  We're grouped together based on what project we would like to work on; I am in the group that is working with a roboticist in the Media Lab.  It's a good balance between using my technical background to understand his products and applying lessons learned so far in my marketing class.  I think my group is going to get a chance to tour the Media Lab next week, which I'm pretty excited about!

Overall, extracurriculars have definitely contributed to the highlights of my semester so far.  Being on committees and clubs in both the LGO and Sloan community has been one aspect of being able to take advantage of the broad opportunities presented to us in this program.

SIP Week & Fall Semester

First off, we're well into fall and it's so beautiful along the Charles.  :)

Last week was Sloan Innovation Period (SIP).  It was basically a week where we had a break from our Sloan classes and had the opportunity to explore classes in leadership and ethics.  Since LGOs still had engineering classes last week, we had different SIP requirements than the Sloanies and didn't technically have to sign up for any additional courses beyond the Core SIP Seminar.   

The Core Seminar titled "Ethics, Values, and Voice" was introduced for the first time this year.  The week started out with a case discussion on "BP and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster of 2010", was followed by a panel discussion on Ethics and the Financial Sector, and ended with class discussions on ethical frameworks and decision making.  I was enrolled in another SIP class, because I'm involved in a project called MarketLab, which I'll talk about in a later post, affiliated with Sloan's Marketing Club.  This class met Mon, Tues, and Wed evening.  Being out of sync with the normal semester schedule threw me off a bit, but overall, class discussions were interesting and for my MarketLab class, I enjoyed the time spent with my team members.   

SIP week is supposed to be lighter than other weeks but I think the week is just as busy for most LGOs.  Here's a comparison of my schedule:

Normal Week

SIP Week

Regular classes have resumed again, and I have to say, it feels good to be back to my normal schedule.  A few posts ago, I talked about the classes I was enrolled in for the fall.  Things have definitely changed since that post!  MIT's add/drop policies are pretty flexible and I have taken full advantage of them.  I ended up dropping my half-term marketing elective and my engineering course and adding another engineering course (15.093J Optimization Methods).  I made my add/drop decisions based on the time required for each class and how well I would or wouldn't be able to prioritize them.  I'm finding that one of my biggest constraints here has been time, and I'm constantly learning what my limits are in terms of what I can handle.       

Many of you out there may be going through the application process right now.  Becca Ford, LGO '10, wrote an awesome post with great advice regarding applications. I especially like what she wrote on essays.  She had a very realistic perspective and very helpful information on what to consider when writing them.  I got a chance to meet several prospectives yesterday during Ambassador Day.  It was great to see such a good turn out and such a strong interest in the program.  Good luck to everyone applying! 

Stay tuned...

How has it already been almost two months since I've last blogged?  So much has happened since the end of August.  Even though this upcoming week is SIP week, my schedule looks just as, if not, busier than my other weeks, so I think I'll write a mini series with updates starting next week.

As a reminder for myself, topics I would like to write about include:
SIP Week
Courses
Clubs
Cohort/Core Team
Being an LGO in the fall

Something I would like to mention in this post for all prospective applicants is that you should definitely try to make it to the LGO Ambassador Day and/or Information Evening on Monday, October 25th.  I went last year, and I thought it was a great way to learn more about the program, meet current students, and get a feel for Boston/Cambridge (it was my first time visiting the city!).