Although there's still one more week to talk about, on to a new topic - INTERNSHIPS!

During the past few days, when I took a break from writing about the two weeks of Plant Trek, some of my classmates posted great summaries. Check out their blogs here: Becca, Jeremy and Paul. As a result, I think I'll spare everyone another "boring" blog about plant trek and instead move on to a new topic:

INTERNSHIPS!

One of the major parts of the LFM experience is a 6 month internship. The whole process is very different from the regular Sloan students who go on a 3 month summer internship and have the ability to recruit at any company.

Here's what happens for us: The LFM class has a selection of internships (primarily from our partner companies) that we choose to interview for, after interviewing and learning more about the position, we rank each internship and the companies rank each student. After that, a crazy algorithm performs voodoo magic and suddenly we are assigned our internships.

Ok, it's not THAT easy or simple, and actually it's a pretty complicated process. Adding to the challenges is that since many of the LFM activities are student run, it's no surprise that the Internship Committee is as well. Unfortunately (for me, but good for him), the Internship Committee Chair is going on an off-cycle internship (that means his internship goes from February to August instead of June to December) and couldn't do a lot of the final planning details cause he hass a big task moving his family. So, it turns out I am Internship Committee co-chair. Yippee! I say this with sarcasm, but it is really a great lesson in managing details and logistics for a pretty big event and it means that I am now intimately familiar with the internship process and the companies.

The interview process for internships spans over 4 days and most students will interview for nearly 15 internships during these four days. Thus, scheduling rooms, coordinating student interview schedules, managing time constraints and keeping the company representatives (and my classmates!) happy is quite a challenge. It's been a whirlwind 2 weeks since I took over, but I'm thankful for my classmates who've been flexible as we wade through the details.

Some advice for the Class of 2011:

• Make sure you have a strong and committed team for the internship committee, come January it's a very important role - your classmates will appreciate your hard work!


• Don't sweat the small stuff, things won't be perfect, but it will all turn out well. (I guess this is really TBD based on next week's events.)


• Do as much of the internship planning and research process before going on Plant Trek as possible.

That's it for now, especially since no one will likely remember this by the time InternshipFest roles around next year. :)

Coming Next... no clue... it could be more Internship stuff, or maybe some talk about InterviewFest for the prospective students, or maybe some talk about Spring classes...

As always, let me know if there are any topic requests!