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.