Life after LGO: 5 Months Later

It’s been 5 1/2 months since I finished my last class at MIT, 4 1/2 months since I graduated and over 3 months since I started my job. In some ways it feels a lot longer and in other ways it feels like just yesterday...

For those who don’t remember, my full time job after LGO is at Apple as a New Product Operations manager and my first 3 months have been far from boring. Since I like bullet points, here’s a brief summary of the highlights.

Contributed to the launch of a the new MacBook Air:

• In case you live in a cave: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/
• I specifically helped launch this little device: http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/20/new-macbook-airs-come-with-software-reinstall-usb-drive/

Business Skills used:

• Negotiations - RFQ and vendor procurement activities
• Team & Relationship building - both with the internal Apple team and between the Apple/Supplier team
• Communication - (effective) communication to upper levels of management
• Project Management - prioritizing requirements, monitoring costs

Engineering Skills used:

• EE stuff - USB drivers are way more complicated than I realized and now I know more about how they work than I ever cared to know
• IE stuff - capacity analysis, supply/demand management, layout development, process optimization

Hourly work schedule:

• Week 1: barely 40 hours
• Weeks 2 - 5: ~55 hours
• Weeks 6 - 13: avg 70 hours, peaking well over 80
• Week 14: 40 hours
• Week 15: <>

So, all in all, it’s been a really exciting time. Despite the crazy hours, I’ve enjoyed the work and I cannot even begin to tell you how cool it is to see something you’ve helped build being discussed and analyzed all over the web! (For good and bad).

What’s even better is I am finally catching up on lost sleep. :) And, the next few months will continue to be interesting because I get to move from the execute mode of product launch to a more strategic mode. Yup, that means lots of Keynote presentations and philosophizing!

While I miss the “carefree” days of grad school, it’s actually cool to reflect back on the work I’ve done and realize that I’m actually putting those 2 fancy degrees to use.

Graduating is kinda like finishing a really good book.

You know that feeling when you're reading a really good book and you finish it? You're excited to reach the end and see how the story comes together, but, you're also sad that there's nothing more to read? Well, I think that's the best way to describe how I feel about finishing LGO.

As of Friday, it's official, I'm a MIT alumni! Yippee!

Graduation festivities were pretty fun, but also super busy. My Mom came into town on Wednesday and left just this morning (Monday). It was nice to have her here to celebrate with me. And, in between the festivities, we even managed a day trip up to Maine (which was my last New England state to check off before I move).

The week was a big whirlwind of emotions. While I'm SO excited to be graduated and moving to San Francisco and joining Apple, I know I'm going to miss all of the great people here and I'm not quite ready to transition from student back to professional. I must admit, I kinda liked the "irresponsibility" I allowed myself just because of my student status. ;) Fortunately, though, work doesn't start immediately for me. My first day is not until July 19th, so I have just over 6 weeks to work on this oh-so-tough transition.

With this new phase of life, I don't know what will happen with this blog. It's intended for students applying to LGO to get an idea of what it's really like in the program, but I think some others might read it too. So, I guess I'm open to suggestions.

However, for now, this is another goodbye and, also, a Thank You for reading and following along during these crazy 2 years.

I'm on a Boat ... Well, a Sail Boat

First of all, lets get the business out of the way... if you don't know what I'm referencing in my title you must view this video. (Note: Lyrics are explicit). Then you must view this video, which is a spoof of the original that some of my MIT classmates put together and is called, I'm at Sloan. Both are pretty awesome, but I especially love the Sloan one.

Ok, now that that's done. I was, seriously, on a boat. For 8 days.

Every year the 2nd year Sloanies take one last trek to the British Virgin Islands and party it up while sailing through the area. The trip was absolutely incredible. I love the Caribbean. This was my fourth trip there and every time I enjoy it even more. Plus, this was my first extended sailing trip where you sleep on a boat and cook on a boat and actually sail the boat.

The boat I was on was one of two LGO boats. And, we had a great dynamic. Despite the actual surface area of the boat being pretty small, I never felt super confined. And, the trip itself was a great balance of partying with our Sloan classmates at bars on shore, as well as snorkeling in amazing coral and, of course, learning how to actually sail our Catamaran. Our skipper was a past LGO grad and he was just incredible. Honestly, I can't think of a thing to complain about. Oh wait, the bathrooms. Showering was tough, but, fortunately, there was a big sea just outside our door to jump into when necessary.

Oh, and one last awesome thing about the trip. We docked our boats on Saturday the 29th around noon and everyone was staying in a hotel Saturday night to fly home on Sunday. That weekend in Tortola was the BVI Music Festival and I was staying near by. After I checked into my hotel, I went to the pool bar to enjoy some drinks and food. I was chatting with this woman for a bit and then after the fact I put all this information together to realize that I just met a celebrity, Fantasia. She was performing for the festival and just happened to be staying at my hotel. I laugh at myself now because while we were talking I had no clue. It wasn't until after when I put together a number of details to realize who she was.

Anyway, that's all.

Check out my photos from the trip through the Picasa Photostream to the right. ;)

Finishing School and Starting the Celebration!

So, I don't want to claim that I'm done, because there could be some unforeseen circumstances that come up. But I'm like 99.999999% sure that I've successfully completed my 2 year journey here at MIT!! I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown by and it just seems a bit unreal to me that it's been 2 years since I quit my job and embarked on life as a full time student.

I actually had a final today - for Finance 2. I'm not sure if it was hard or not - I felt I did good enough for a B, which, really is more than I even need. It's so funny how my perspective on grades has changed so much not just from undergrad to now, but even from 2 years ago to now. In any case, it was pretty much a formality. But, it's done, and although it doesn't yet feel any different, I know it will soon.

Graduation won't be for almost 3 weeks. I think they want to be sure that we actually earn our degrees before we graduate. In the mean time there are lots of parties and get togethers going on so that we can enjoy the last few weeks with each other. And, boy are we celebrating. On Saturday, we had our class' End-of-the-Program party. It was our last "informal" event to celebrate our 2 years together. Sadly, there's a number of people who won't be at graduation, so the good-byes are definitely starting. We sufficiently partied it up and had an awesome time hanging out together.

It's all bitter sweet. I think I've said before that my favorite part of LGO is my classmates. While I'm definitely ready to have no more participation grades, no cases to read and definitely no more exams to take, I know that I am not ready to leave my awesome classmates.