the LGO journey

a day in the life, volume 1

I remember reading recruiting websites when I was looking for jobs after college and remembered that one of the coolest thing to read was always a “day in the life” showing what someone did on an average day.  Although there is definitely not an average day, I am going to attempt to share some of my days over the course of the year.  Here we go:

7:30 AM - Arrive at the LGO office for an off-cycle internship meeting.  We have to meet to understand how to rank the companies we are going to interview for.  People are not too happy that we are up this early as most classes usually start at 8:30

Note that classes start 5 minutes after the posted time and 5 minutes before the posted time.  This makes a 90 minute class a little more bearable.  This is called MIT time

8:35-9:55 AM - Logistics Systems (my only engineering class this semester).  Relatively standard lecture about inventory policies and the newsvendor model which we went over briefly in a couple of our summer classes.  Since I was comfortable with the material I may or may not have snuck some time during class to review for my Organizational Processes exam the next day.  Will definitely help me to get a lot of sleep (something I’ve consistently been able to do since I started)

10:25-11:45 AM - Marketing - This is one of the core electives and one of my favorite classes.  Our professors plays music before class and today “Hard Knock Life” by JayZ is getting us pretty pumped.  The class lecture is loaded with cool examples and discussions of behavioral economics, one of my favorite topics.

12:00 PM - Respond to some emails and chat with some friends outside of MIT world (yes I have managed to maintain some relationships outside of school).  Next grab some lunch and head over to E-52 to drop off a payment for the sports trek that the Entertainment Media and Sports conference is running in a couple weeks.  I see a friend doing the same and talk about how we are excited to visit the New York Giants even though we are hardcore Patriots fans.  We are also visiting the NFL and NBA - it should be an exciting trip!

1:05 - 2:25 PM - Global Health Delivery and Management - This is a new class I added for the 2nd half of the semester.  One of the cool things about LGO is that you are not restricted to the core in the first fall semester.  I am pretty excited about this class because its something I don’t know much about, im interested in healthcare and it lets my mind shift away from some of the less interesting classes.

We go over a case in class written by four 2009 Sloan MBA graduates who worked with a health clinic in Kenya.  They were able to work with the organization through one of the most popular Sloan classes, G-Lab, and really make an impact.  

2:30 - 4:00 PM - Attend the last couple of speakers at the Delivering Customer Value through Flexible Operations conference being held a couple floors up.  It was free as an LGO student and I even got a copy of David Simchi-Levi’s new book Operations Rules. Nice!

4:00 - 5:30 PM - Back to the LGO office.  Go over my Logistics homework for a meeting to go over it at 5:30 (we do homework in teams of 3 and I work with 2 other LGOs).  I realize I did my problem completely wrong.  Luckily, I see someone in class that went to office hours and he quickly sets me on the right path.  Redo my answer, quickly remind myself of how to do a derivative and pull together my part of the assignment.  I have 20 minutes left before my meeting and offer to help one of my fellow LGOs with her resume.

5:30 - 6:30 PM - Go over logistics homework with the group.  We all did our parts, but still have some work to do before we hand it in on Friday.  A couple of us want to go to the $100K Elevator Pitch Contest, so we call it a night and intend to work on it tomorrow.

7:00 - 9:00 PM - Attend the $100k elevator pitch competition.  This is an annual tradition for Sloan that is a venue for entrepreneurs to fine tune their ideas and practice in front of fellow students.  Top place for this part of the competition gets $10,000, which is great for a student on a $0 salary.  This event was so packed, that we had to watch a live feed in another room.  I am probably not doing this justice, but would definitely recommend checking out the site, especially if you are interested in entrepreneurship.

9:30 - Get home, pretty drained from the day.  My roommate, a consultant, is also home pretty “early” and we catch up on some TV.  I then watch a video from the Sloan Sports Conference last year to prepare for a discussion I have on Friday with one of the lead conference organizers.  

11:00 - Its 11:00 right now.  I just finished this post and am about to go to bed.  I have a bit of studying left for my 2:30 exam tomorrow, but am planning to take care of it during my breaks tomorrow.

- I would definitely say not every day is like this.  Some days I have nothing to do after 4.  Some days I don’t leave the office until 10.  This Friday, I don’t have any obligations on campus.  I’ll probably spend a couple hours doing homework and get ready to enjoy the weekend.

- This day does a good job of showing the different opportunities on campus.  There are interesting classes (global health), conferences (flexible operations conference), great classmates (helping me with my homework), amazing opportunities (the $100K competition) and overall, just a lively community.  Its a great place to be!

27 October 2010 · Comments