Orientation Week starts tomorrow!

So it officially starts tomorrow. Although it feels strange going through orientation again I think it will be alot different with my 300 new classmates. It should be interesting! I'll update a the end of the week. Oh and I added a pic from the BBQ last thursday...can't stay away from my LGO crew :)

Dinner in chinatown and berryline

I had dinner in chinatown tonight where I met about 25 incoming sloanies. Catherine was nice enough to invite me and it was a good time. They are having a study group tomorrow and I am planning on joining them. Tthe topic tomorrow will be accounting. Anyway The place we went to eat was called.....New Golden Gate Inc. I guess that is not too surprising since they were right next to the golden arch in chinatown. We had ten people at our table and ordered a ton of food! However our bill per person was only $11. You can't beat that! Afterwards I went to berryline in harvard square. I was stuffed from dinner but I had been craving some yogurt for a couple of weeks. I love going there because it reminds me of my vacation to LA with my friend Kami. While we were out there we discovered pinkberry and became totally addicted before we left! Thankfully I can still get my yogurt fix over here. Flying back to LA for yogurt would get awfully expensive pretty quickly :)

Going Back home and Pre-term

So I left a day early because I did not have much time off between end of summer classes and beginning of preterm (yes I spent the $450 to take those classes more on that in a bit) I missed the end of summer cookout...which is kinda sad because from all the pics it looks like it was a great time. I got home monday night and was at work tuesday morning (no rest for the weary!) I was hoping to have an easy last week at NGC but it was very hectic. I couldn't walk down the hall without someone asking me about school. When I left in the beginning of summer I had planned to be funded part time for my education but 'upper' management found out and they pulled my funding. I made one last attempt and talked to as many VPs as I could before I left but was not able to make any progress. I wont deny that I was sad to leave the place. Ten years at one company is a long time but I don't regret coming to school.
I did have to deal with some issues with my house before I left. They had a leak but luckily I was there to make sure everything was okay. It was strange to come back home to see other people living there. I stayed over the weekend which I had not planned. Gave up my vermont E-trek to do that but it gave me the chance to see some more of my friends and that was great!
I come back sunday afternoon and started going though my emails. I was so determined to take pre-term classes when I paid the $450 a month ago. I definitely learn material better when I am in a class versus reading it on my own but $450 dollars??? All the material is online so I decided to drop pre-term and read the information on my own. Hopefully I'll be productive this week...of course I would still like to make a beach trip hmmmmmm

The end of summer session

So summer session is finally over! It was a really busy last week. As I mentioned previously I signed up for a Harvard vs MIT case competition and got randomly selected. Adding that to my workload right when everything was due was a bit overwhelming. I didn't get a chance to study as much for my stats test as I would have liked. Anyway about the case competition. First of all I will definitely do it again. Secondly if I get selected again I think I could win. Here are the things I learned..

1. The key is to have a good presentation. The content matters but not as much as the presentation.

2. Our team spent hours researching the topic, you really don't need all that time. You should be able to finish it all in about 20 hours.

3. You do not get to pick your team....so be prepared for that! Not everyone at MIT are like your fellow LGOs :)

4. The consultants are great! very helpful and they wont tear you apart when you present to them.

I am still deciding on my fall classes. Hmmm....more to come

We had our orientation for the Sloan school today. We got our goodie bags which included a cool new water bottle and thumb drive with information about preterm and case information. We will have assignments due the first day of class. :(

We are down to the last few days of our summer session and even though I would love a long break right now I signed up for pre term the ONLY person in the LGO program that did! I'll write about that after I complete it. I don't have a finance or accounting background and I didn't want to start the semester off behind. I am taking a pretty intensive engineering course in the fall (ESD.71) plus marketing and finance plus all my MBA core classes! I think it will be alot of work but i am hoping it will be alot of fun as well. It's been so quiet on campus this summer so it will be a nice change to meet all the new people in the fall. Anyway enough for now...i need to pay attention in Stats and not be blogging we have our final on friday. Oh and I need to ask the prof today if I can take the final early...i signed up for a MIT vs Harvard case competition and got randomly selected....that is friday as well...anyway i'll talk about that one later this week!

Leadership Reaction Course

So first I would have to say I wish I had started this earlier in the summer. So much has happened in the past 8 weeks! But at least I have finally started! I hope you enjoy my posts over the next 2 years. Please feel free to leave comments!

Okay enough of that let me talk about the LRC! That's me in the tube looking down at the water on the other side.

This past monday we went to an army facility in cape cod and went through their leadership reaction course. After spending the last couple of weeks in a classroom it was nice to get out for the day. If you are not familiar with the LRC, they are a set of 'obstacle' courses. You are given an objective for example : deliver this ammunition to your comrades on the other side of the mine field. You can only use what has been given to you, usually planks, rope etc. We got to work in different teams and I have to say it was alot of fun! 3 of the 8 cour

ses had water and I was petrified of getting wet. The water looked less than appealing...waist deep, murky brown and full of tadpoles. We were trying not to have anyone fall in but as you can see Diego was not that lucky! We were laughing so hard we couldn't stand on the board anymore and he fell in. Diego was a great sport about it. That was probably one of the highlights of the day :) If you ever get a chance to do something like this I would encourage you to try it. It was a great team building experience!