The end of the beginning

So Sloan Orientation is over.  I've chewed, digested, and passed it.  Good but not great.  It was like drinking soda after eating ice cream.  It is just not as sweet.  Compared to the start of summer with the orientation we got in LFM, Sloan orientation was bland.  I'm sure the Sloan students think it was fantastic...but they are drinking soda for the first time and we (LFM) are still savoring our ice cream.

Not to imply that the week did not have some good moments.  Some of the events (like our first case study or Question and Answer sessions) was bland because we already did it in LFM.  The Warren center was fun.  The day started early in the morning and for our team it was a bit hectic.  One of our team members did not arrive and was not answering his phone.  My team includes Chris, Amanda, Jun, Marcelo, and Sushmita and our pilot is Kumar (he took all the pictures).  Marcelo could not make it and we were forced to continue on without him.  All in all I have a fantastic team.  I've heard some horror stories but I think my team has and will continue to gel.

[caption id="attachment_111" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Pacific Penguins (minus one)"][/caption]

So we started the day at the Warren center with some mind games.

[caption id="attachment_101" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Touch the numbers"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_103" align="alignnone" width="111" caption="The island game (two blind, two mute, one leader, and the ground is lava...go)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_102" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The blind leading the blind"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_104" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Tossing a ball into a cup...had I listened to the instructions I would have known we only needed to get ONE ball in the cup...not all three...I am the weakest link"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The ground is lava"][/caption]

After lunch we built lake-worthy rafts

[caption id="attachment_106" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Cast away? Can we make it?"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_107" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Tight ropes make for strong boats...I am no longer the weakest link!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_108" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Cast away? We would make it.  First to launch, first to return, and our boat was used by three other teams!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_109" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Not all teams were as successful as the Pacific Penguins...don't worry, we lent them our boat."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Penguins don't need to swim"][/caption]

We finished up the day at a climbing ladder

[caption id="attachment_112" align="alignnone" width="111" caption="Where were you when they built that ladder to heaven (South Park...look it up)?"][/caption]

Overall, a good day.

[caption id="attachment_113" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Pacific Penguins - Marcelo + Pilot"][/caption]

The final day included the beer game.  The LFM group played this game during the summer so I did not attend, but I heard they had as much fun as we did.  It is always hilarious in interesting to observe how everyone makes the same mistakes in that game.

The week finished up with a nice mixer and school starts on Tuesday with registration.  Should be great!

School with the rest of the Sloanies

So today marks the start of the Fall semester with orientation. LFM mixing with MBA...interesting to say the least. The whole situation is sort of funny from an LFM point of view because we've been at school for over three months. Some of the luster has worn off and we're just ready to work. These incoming MBAs are just starting their semester and they are all gung-ho and ready to impress. Lets just say I heard a few people listing their GMAT scores. I don't want to give the wrong impression though so I will switch to some of the positive. All in all the group seems strong and very diverse. i could list a whole slew of stats about how diverse and strong we are...but you can look them up if you are interested. The morning started with breakfast and hobnobbing. Followed by some speeches by the President of the school Susan Hockfield, the Dean of Sloan, and other Sloan members. The President was a good speaker and I appreciate her coming out to speak to us. The Dean let us know that her coming out was a big deal. Her talk was good. His was better. She spoke of how well MIT and Sloan are integrated which I found sort of humorous compared to my undergraduate school, Florida.

At Florida it feels like one big school. If you want to change majors and therefore switch "schools" you just do it. Most people don't even know the name of their school. Apparently their business school is called the Warrington College of Business Administration. Who knew? MIT seems like separate islands that tolerate each other because it benefits them. The business school, Sloan, has their own way of doing everything and it is not the same as the way the rest of MIT does things. I can't speak for the other schools at MIT but Sloan just feels like it's own group. When summer ended, the engineering classes had separate course evaluation forms....apparently they can't even share those. That is where LFM comes in. We really seem to be a major link between Sloan and the engineering part of MIT driving to unite the parties as much as is possible. Either way, Susan seems to think we are well integrated...and maybe we are. I have not been here long so I can't compare the current state to how it used to be. I have also not attended another top business school to see what their disconnect was like. Maybe MIT is miles ahead compared to the other elite programs.

Back to orientation. After the speeches we went to meet our oceans. The groups of ~400 students is broken up in to groups of about 50 and we all have ocean names. I am in the Pacific ocean. We played some ice breaking games and learned our ocean cheer. Pacific's cheer is alright, but some of the others are better. Ours has no rhythm. After that we went to lunch and followed by presentations about working in our group and life at MIT. I only fell asleep twice, which is about average. i won an award at the end of summer from the LFM group called "The Sleeping Dude" award. I like to limit myself to five hours of sleep a night so if I am not interested in something I fall asleep. Anywhere. Anytime. I can fall asleep standing up. When that happens, the fall wakes you up.

Next, after some optional sessions that I did not attend, was a clambake. It was cool. Good free food, free beer (even though I don't drink, I appreciate the social lubricant for others), nice night. All in all, a good day. The rest of the week should be nice as well. I'll report in on those later.

Clone Wars movie

So I just got back from Star Wars: The Clone Wars the movie and I have to say mediocre at best.  It just felt too childish, as did the three newer movies.  I don't mind that Star Wars caters to kids but it also be inclusive of adults.  At least The Force Unleashed looks good which will satisfy my Star Wars craving.  Lucas Arts has been disappointing me with it's lack of a new flight simulator (X-Wing and Tie Fighter are some of the greatest games ever and we've had nothing worth playing since X-Wing Alliance which is mediocre at best).  I would also love a sequel to Republic Commando.  That is all.

The summer semester is over!

Well we are finally done our classes. We had a great time on Friday by distributing paper bow ties to the entire class for the last day. Why paper bow ties you say? Well, our Lean manufacturing professor likes to wear a bow tie so we thought it would be funny. Mine was an over sized bow tie made from an entire 8.5"x11" piece of paper. Blue with green polka dots. After class we had a bar-b-que in a courtyard at MIT with most of summer professors where we handed out summer awards. I won the "Sleeping Dude" award because I fall asleep in class all the time. I average 5 hours of sleep a night so if class is not interesting I fall asleep (or if a certain professor has a monotone voice that makes Ben Stein look like Robin Williams...and I'm talking the Robin Williams when he was still on drugs). After the bar-b-que we went over to the party house (thanks Jeremy, Kash, and Becca) to celebrate the end of the semester. I'll add some pictures when I get them from the people who were snapping away with their cameras all night. The pictures will have to come from the beginning of the night...because by the end it was a little wild. Lets just say there was a dance off...and everyone lost. To give you an idea of the level of awesomeness...the cops showed up at 7:21 PM to tell us to keep it down. Time for a little R&R before Sloan orientation begins.

Helicopter Extravaganza

Today we competed across the summer teams in our statistics class. The competition was serious business...paper helicopters. The helicopters were the result of our statistical design of experiment to analyze and optimize the design of the helicopters. My team, Lucky #7, came in third overall with the best (longest) hang time and fifth place in distance. The best part of the competition is seeing the creative designs that other teams came up with. One of the Navy teams had a tiny paper cone and when I first saw it I thought no way is that thing going to fly...and then it flew beautifully. Either way, the event was really fun and was definetly the highlight of the stats class.

Busy season

This past week and this week coming up makeup the busy season for an LFM student. Sure the midterms were tough and that was a busy week, but now we have projects due. The professors have been accommodating to our woes and homework has eased up to make way for the projects. Again I will stress that while we are busy, it is not that bad. I still find time to read for pleasure (right now I am on a binge of my favorite author Heinlein) and watch LOTR for what has to be about the 20th time (I watched as I completed my work for our Systems project and as I write this post).

This past Friday about 2/3 of the LFm class got together for a party and since it was on we watched the Olympic games opening ceremony. It was quite a show and the atmosphere among the LFM group made the opening extremely fun. We all cheered for the countries of fellow members of our program (Nigeria, India, Mexico, Argentina just to name a few) and booed the appropriate rivals (France, Canada, etc.). The party really showed the camaraderie we feel within the program. Not necessarily because we cheered and booed each others countries, but because despite a summer of being in a room with the same people everyday we still elect to hang out together on the weekends. It has been like this all summer. When someone has a birthday and an email goes out saying that we are going out for drinks or dinner, at least 30 LFM members (plus their significant others) show up.

Building on that camaraderie I have to say that this is not a group that is competitive against its members. You can see that with the way we approach our school work. People are glad to tell you how they solved a problem or what they think will be on a test, there are no secrets in an attempt to get a competitive advantage.