About Kacey

We went to four Halloween events with Nolan this year!  I made Nolan a costume; he was a ghost.  Boo!

HallowMIT

Last week was HallowMIT, MIT’s campus wide halloween party.  There were a bunch of carnival-type games, candy and cotton candy, balloons and the MIT Beaver mascot.  There was also a room off to the side where you could carve pumpkins, but we didn’t find the room until all the pumpkins were gone.  They also had a photo taker that would take pictures and turn into buttons, but we too tried too late.  They did have balloons, which Nolan is obsessed with.  This event was best suited for elementary-aged kids.  We arrived to the event about an hour after it started, because it was during Nolan’s nap time.  We saw Noramay and Chas there, too.

Sloan Halloween

Friday, we had two events hosted by department schools.  First, was the Sloan Halloween.  It involved a trick-or-treat around the Sloan and Tang Buildings (candy for mommy and daddy), and then a reception with food in the lobby.  We came an hour late to this event too, because it started during Nolan’s nap time.  There was a lot of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, and it was probably best geared towards preschoolers.  It was fun to see some of the other kids.

Chemical Engineering Graduate Students Halloween

From there, we went over to the Chemical Engineering Building to the GSC-X Halloween Party.  This was hosted in the kitchen/break area of the building, and had the best food with yummy Indian food (which was advertised, so we knew not to eat before!) and alcohol too.  Kids were welcome and they gave Nolan little kid toys, but it was definitely geared towards the graduate students as it was crowded and had loud music.

MIT Family Net Healthy Family Day / Halloween

Saturday, on Halloween, we went to the MIT Family Net Healthy Family event at the Z-Center.  This was planned at the last minute, but this wasn’t obvious to the guests!  This was the most fun because it involved free use of the Z-Center (it is included in tuition for students, but family rates are more) for several activities.  First was a little costume contest.  Then was either kid’s yoga or playing in the pool!  We went for the pool.  It was fun, Nolan kept shivering but he had a good time.  Also a good lesson was reinforced - to bring an extra swim diaper, even if you think you don’t need it.  I think the diaper was missing the absorbent liner!  The Z-Center pool also has a small but nice family changing room.  There were also activities where the kids ran around and parent massages that Chris got (I missed it!).

Since it was a healthy event, there were sandwiches, juices, and healthy snacks at this event (and no candy).  I think the Z-Center is sponsored by Clif bars, because they had three large boxes of various Clif brand products, and they encouraged us to take extras, so we did … and no one else did… so we took more.. and more…and ended up with tons of them.  They will be good snacks between classes.

We had lots of fun at the Family Net Halloween and it was full of good activities for all ages of kids.  It was nice that it started before nap time (11:30 am-2:00 pm).  At the end, all the kids had lots of fun and were ready for a long nap.

Oh, and Nolan won second place in the costume contest! :)

Nolan’s prize for winning:  little basket with a stuffed cat/pumpkin and a spider (that he chewed on).

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Overall, we had a nice Halloween and by Saturday night, we were all tired!

As of this week, we are halfway complete with our fall core semester at MIT Sloan!  Yeah!  Instead of the usual classes, we get a break in our routine, where all regular Sloan classes are canceled and we instead have a week of different kinds of learning.  This is called Sloan Innovation Period, or SIP.

SIP is like at work when you balance your on the job development with training classes.  Some of the classes are taught by professors, some by guest lecturers or pepole from other schools, and some by professional training people.

This is the first year that LGOs are required to participate in SIP, but we only have to do half as many credits as the regular MBAs, since we still have our engineering classes this week.  The classes are different lengths and have different credit amounts, but I took two 3-hour classes to fulfill my requirement.

My first SIP class was terrible.  I was really disappointed.  The guy had an interesting bio and experiences, but it didn’t relay to a good class.  He started out by talking about how he categorizes employees into stereotypes, basically “good and ambitious”, “okay and stays in the background”, and “bad seeds that pollute others”.  That isn’t what I think of as good leadership, and goes against some of my leadership principles.  He ended the lecture by going on about nature, the economy and society.  I left the class hoping this was a fluke among SIP classes.

Friday, I had my other SIP class.  It was great!!!  We had an instructor from The Ariel Group, who taught us through examples and exercises how qualities that make for a good actor translate to helping us improve our leadership and communication abilities.  Our instructor was a former street performer - fun!!  One exercise we talked about how we display emotions, and practiced by pairing up and discuss a topic by switching from one emotion to another (talking about rollercoasters with emotions like love, then sorrow, then calmness, then disappointment, then excitement).  We were able to focus on how our recipient interpreted our emotions, and learn how we could better display our emotions.  Also, we discussed ways to enhance our storytelling, which Asvin (LGO’11) pointed out is a good idea to improve and energize your interview stories.  “Tell me about a time when” will never be the same!  Each class member got a book, to continue our learning outside of our brief 3-hour experience.

After talking to other students, most people had great or pretty good experiences with their SIP classes, and enjoyed the opportunity to have development in a different forum.  It is also a very great break from routine and wonderful to have less classes.  Many people go home or take a trip for the first or last half of the week, too.  My parents came out the first half, which was great because they hadn’t been here to visit since I started school.  Later in the week, my mother-in-law came.  They all were happy to come visit their grandson!

SIP, and IAP, Independent Activities Period in January are two big things that distinguish Sloan and MIT from its peers.  Check out these two special time periods when you’re looking at MIT!

Earlier I posted about three of my classes this summer.  Here’s the other two:

ESD.60 - Creating High Velocity Organizations (Lean/Six Sigma)

This class was taught by Steve Spear, who is an expert on Lean/Six Sigma concepts and has done a lot of work with hospitals and Toyota.  He recently published his book that was our textbook, called Chasing the Rabbit.  This class was really interesting for me, coming from the pharmaceutical industry, where the act implementing lean concepts is just a little different than other industries.  We also had a few projects, including an in-depth interview with a front-line worker of our own selection.  He was big on having everyone write short one-page blurbs on the reading assignments, then we could look at them after and reflect blatantly what we learned (even if it was a lot of work, it is an effective method).  It was great to learn about lean/six sigma from Steve and the many great speakers we had this summer!

15.066 - System Optimization and Analysis for Manufacturing

This was our hardest content class of the summer, and it was great!  It started out tough and got tougher.  I completely learned the most in this class than any other class this summer, and it will really be valuable skills in the future.  We did a lot of concepts involving computer optimization, modeling, simulation, network flow, and linear programming.

Our professor, Jeremie Gallien, was awesome too.  He works with Zara, a clothing company and has transformed how they distribute fashion while decreasing product waste and increasing customer satisfaction.  Here’s an article describing the project.

The course ended with each group doing a big project that solved a problem in industry, usually with a Boston-area company or a previous employer.  Also, the projects were so intense that Excel wasn’t powerful enough to do them.  We used an upgraded solver addition, and many other groups had to use other software entirely.

We did a project for my previous employer optimizing the matching of summer interns to projects, with the goal of making the interns as happy as possible to maximize potential for full-time hire.  We used many sets of data and regression techniques to calculated a “happiness function” and determined the intern project pairing that optimized the collective happiness of the interns while utilizing the best available projects.  It was very cool!

This was the class where I really confirmed that I’m here to learn and wasn’t going to not take a class that sounded interesting just ‘because it might be really hard’.  I ended up with a good grade in Systems, but, I’m not here for grades, I’m here for learning, and I’ll learn a lot from a really interesting class that is hard and that I don’t have a lot of existing knowledge in the subject.

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In summary, the summer classes were awesome and most LGOs describe their summer as the best of the program.  We had a summer of classes tailored to our operations interest and engineering background with our 47 new friends.

If you have any questions about LGO or my experiences as a student, please leave me comments.  I look forward to hearing from you!

How do you find the right school for you?   I have several friends who are applying or considering applying, and here are questions I recommend pondering as you considering going to school.

1. What is important to me about the school and location?
2. How do I fit in with the culture?
3. Is this what I want to do, and what do I want to do afterward?
4. Are there other programs outside of a general MBA, like LGO or other dual degree program, or an optional track focused program or the Chemical Engineering Department’s Practice School, that better meet my interests?  (I’ve met people in ChemE and Sloan that would have been a good fit for LGO)
5. What kind of people are attracted to this program, and do I want to go to school with them?  Are they like me?  How are they different?
6. What type of companies, industries, and locations of companies recruit at this school?

My biggest piece of advice to answer some of these questions is to visit schools.  Unfortunately, visiting schools is often expensive and takes a lot of time, and possibly vacation from work.

I highly recommend visiting your top potential few schools.  But, since it is expensive and time consuming to visit many schools, I also recommend visiting schools nearby your current location, even if you might not be interested in them.  This helps you learn more about what you want and may reinforce or shift your thoughts.  I didn’t take advantage of this enough - there were two good schools nearby and two others within a short drive that I should have visited.

Visiting a class or spending a day with a student is a great way to learn about the culture and student life.  During a class visit at a school-which-shall-remain-unnamed, my host student spent her time in class with her laptop up, working on something for the next class and proceeded to tell me that this professor wasn’t very good, to justify why no one was paying attention!  In this experience, I learned that this school was not worth me leaving my job, and it reinforced how important it is for me to be respectful during my classes (paying attention, not entering/exiting the room, not using cell phone/texting, not having my laptop up).   It is disruptive for other students, hurts the brand image of the school for current and prospective students, and disrespectful to professors, lecturers, and guest speakers.

Outside of visiting schools, I relied heavily on stories from alumni friends and the internet because I couldn’t easily travel much with a small baby.  This is one of the reasons I am blogging.  Good websites and blogs are very important to creating a good image for a program.  Bad websites turn students off and disorganization or poor communication translates to the image of a poor experience as a student.  I also found it frustrating when schools advertised blogs that hadn’t been updated in months or years!  I particularly like the feeds set up for Sloan and LGO, where you can readily read the latest student blogs, without clicking through a dozen blogs that aren’t used.  If a school can’t do a good job of communicating when they are trying to sell the product, how will they do after I’m already a student!

In conclusion, listen to your own thoughts and find the school that is right for you.  All the schools with top rankings will attract great students with more diversity in experiences than practically any other environment, and have an outstanding program and faculty to teach you.  If you’re a prospective student, I do hope you look at LGO, MIT, and Sloan, and if it is a good fit for you like it is for me, I hope to see you here.  If it isn’t, I hope you find what you’re looking for.

Search inside yourself and decide what is right for you.

It’s starting up for recruiting season for LGO!  Do you want to earn an MBA from MIT Sloan and an Engineering degree from MIT’s top engineering school?  Applications are due December 15th which means you prospective LGOers should have the GMAT under your belt or signed up to take it in the next month or two.  There is a LGO Ambassador Day and Information Evening.  Come and visit us!!!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=139463833007&ref=mf

One of the cool parts of LGO is we have our own office area (that we share with SDM).  Fellow Boilermaker and Indiana native, Brad, recently took some great pictures of our home-away-from-home.  I encourage you to take a look!

http://onebradatatime.blogspot.com/2009/09/applicants.html

My group in Principles and Practice of Drug Development class presented the “News of the Week” today.  This entails a team of three or four presenting a few key stories to the class in a presentation, and writing a blog entry with links to lots of stories.

http://ppddatmit.blogspot.com/2009/09/921-930-week-in-review-biosimilars.html

Last, but most fun.  My 14-month old learned how to climb into his bouncer (which yes, he’s a little big for).  Its pretty cute.  He’s a climber!

http://phillipsrhit.blogspot.com/2009/09/nolan-climber.html

“Eh, do I really want to work in the oil industry?” - I overheard this in an engineering class today.

A big difference between undergraduate and graduate school, for me, is that I know much better what I want to do.  I’m still trying to refine it, but its much better.  Job and internship search in undergrad was definitely quantity over quality.  I tried to target a lot of the companies that hire chemical engineers and just hoped for a job.  Shoot for everything and hope something lands.  This was during a bad economy too - my school’s job fair my senior year was held on September 11, 2001.

Now, I’ve got seven years experience, I’m not worried about getting a job even in the depressed economy because I’m focusing skills and development towards a target.  Also, I know a lot better what I want and what is important to me.  If you try to ‘keep options open’, you’ll likely end up with no options.  Work toward something in particular.  If you’re not sure what you want to do, try doing something with volunteering or with a group/club.

Many of my peers are in situations where they are trying to figure out what they want to do.  Here’s my advice to them as well as my other readers.

What is important to you?

What do you value?

What do you like?

What is your impact going to be?

Find a mentor or someone you admire and talk to them about these things.  Talking about them outloud and describing your thoughts will make things more clear to you and figure out where you need to focus.  I did this today with Bill Hanson* as part of my Leadership and Ethics course.  It was one of the most valuable experiences since I’ve been at LGO.

As I’ve learned in Marketing this semester (this class is completely awesome, by the way), target specifically what you want and go for it.  You can’t target everyone or everything.

Unapologetically go for what you want, be yourself, and be what you want to be.

*Bill Hanson - former Vice President of Manufacturing, Digital Equipment Corporation, founding LGO Governing Board member, first LGO Industry Co-Director; currently serving on LGO’s leadership faculty.  He co-teaches my Leadership and Ethics course this fall.

I blogged about my experience “Making the Leap” to school, and now I have three links to share of friends who have recently made a leap into something new.

Beth, a friend from high school and mommy of 9-year-old Austin and 2-year-old Drew, returned to college for Nursing.  She and her family also moved back to our hometown where their families are able to help with Austin and Drew.

Beth’s Blessed Life - http://bethblessedlife.blogspot.com/

Friends from Purdue, Jason and Swiss both left their jobs this summer and are travelling around the world for a year.  Awesome.  They have great stories and adventures, and are just finishing their time in Australia after starting in New Zealand.  Check out the map on their page to see where they’ve been and where they’re going.

Jason and Swiss’s Round the World Blog - http://www.jasonswissrtw.com/

Also a Purdue alum, my friend Kevin left his job recently to join the Peace Corps as a Physics teacher in Guinea.  He doesn’t have internet very frequently, but his blog tells about his adventure.  This is something he’s wanted to do for a long time, so I’m glad he went.

Kevin, Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea - http://guineagogy.blogspot.com/

MIT has several things that are special to MIT.  Some make sense, others just are.

• Grades are done on a five-point scale.  1 to 5, so its the same as 0 to 4, just increased by 1.  I can’t complain, a 4.5 does sound better.  :)
• Instead of “I’m a Chemical Engineering major”  its  “I’m in Course 10”.  This is confusing for new people because it takes a little while to pick up on what all the numbers are.  Sloanies seem to be the exception by *not* referring to themselves as Course 15.  I have also heard that when you are taking a class its a lower case “course” to distinguish from your Course.
• These numbers are used for classes too.  Instead of CHE547, I’m taking 10.547.  They like numbers.  Also, when a class is taken by people in many departments, it is cross listed with multiple course names, instead of just taking a course from another department.  10.547 is actually six course numbers…  “7.547J, 10.547J, 15.136J, ESD.691J, HST.920J, BCMP230  - Principles and Practice of Drug Development”.  (The J is used to indicate it is cross listed.)
• Buildings are mostly numbers too.  The ChemE building is 66.  Have I mentioned the building is triangular?  I like having class in a triangular building.  (Secretly, its one of the reasons I wanted to take 10.25 this semester.)  My quick wikipedia search tells me its a 30-60-90 triangle.  And this isn’t the most interesting building on campus.
• MIT Time.  Things end five minutes early and start five minutes late to allow for classes.  I have found this to be used as an excuse for any non-class meeting to also start five minutes late.

There are more, this is just a few things from the top of my mind.