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!
