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!

Domestic Plant Trek: Two Weeks, 9 Companies & 5 Cities

It's hard to believe our Domestic Plant Trek is already over. I remember when I first got into LFM and met the current students, I heard frequently that this would be the highlight of my two years here. I don't want to hype it up too much, but it was really pretty awesome!

Before I go any further, I'll just highlight things, but Drew did a GREAT job of blogging every night, so if you want more details, you should check out his blog too.

Below is a "brief" day-by-day breakdown of week 1 events, I'll post week 2 in another day or so.

Sunday 1/4:
Myself and a few of the West Coast people flew into Seattle separate from the large group. It turned out that it was probably the best decision we made, as the weather in Seattle was snowy, which caused the flight from Boston to have to make a pit stop in Montana (I think) for re-fueling and a flight that lasted 4 hours longer than it should have. Those of us already in town enjoyed happy hour dinner and drinks and a nice night of sleep before the official trek started.

Monday 1/5:
Our first plant visit was to Boeing's 737 manufacturing plant. I don't want to down play Boeing, but I must admit this was the least exciting plant visit for me since I'd worked in aerospace for 5 1/2 years and I find Fighter Airplanes a tad bit cooler.  BUT, I must admit, the highlight was the afternoon's visit to the delivery center, when we got to go into a brand new Delta 737. It smelled like a brand new car, and I did feel a bit like a kid in a candy store, wanting to open and close every door, despite flying probably hundreds of times in my life. The day was capped off by a visit to the Museum of Flight, dinner and a Q&A session with LFM grads now working at Boeing.

Tuesday 1/6:
The first half of the day was another visit to Boeing, this time to see the 747, 777 and the 787 Dreamliner assembly lines. I thought these tours were a lot more interesting because we were actually on the manufacturing floor and the planes were HUGE!!! Boeing also took us on a tour of their 787 Dreamliner Gallery where they bring customers to customize their airplane. It was another kid in a candy store experience. The highlight of which was playing with the various types of First Class seats!

After finishing our tours with Boeing we were off to take Amtrak from Seattle to Portland, Oregon. This actually proved to be very exciting and a lot of fun!  I'd never been on a train like that and I loved that it offered a lot more freedom to walk around than a plane. Our group did get "scolded" a few times for being a bit rowdy, but that's what made the 4 hour ride even more fun.

Wednesday 1/7:
This was the first day when plant trek activities did not involve getting up really early... but, because my Dad and Brother live in Portland, I still was up early to meet them for breakfast. After a tasty meal, I met up with the rest of the group at Intel in Hillsboro. This was my group's day to do the plant review, which means we observe the company, making notes about culture/environment, the plant and offering suggestions for improvement. Intel put on a great day for us. They even brought in a Fab manager and one of their Vice-Presidents. The tour was just a window tour of Fab 20 since it's a big effort to get us in bunny suits, but it did give us some appreciation for the complicated process of manufacturing chips. In the evening, Intel hosted a reception with drinks and finger foods and a great chance to mingle with their company representatives. After the company events, our time in Portland was caped off with an evening of drinking and socializing. We thoroughly enjoyed Portland's reverse Happy Hour where drinks and food go on sale from usually about 9 PM to close. The unfortunate thing about Portland is we were there on odd week nights, so bars were closing at 11 PM or midnight, causing us to frequently re-locate. But, that just meant that we saw a lot more of the city!

Thursday 1/8:
This was primarily a travel day, flying from Portland to Reno, NV. Once arriving in Reno, we had a few hours to kill before a dinner with Amazon... many slept, some went for runs, my group and I had to do our debrief from the Intel visit the day before. But after it finished, I still had some time for a quick nap. The Amazon dinner was great. They have such a relaxed culture and all of their employees really were easy to talk to. Their presentation was great because they focused less on inundating us with information and more on allowing us to ask questions. Which, with our group, might be a mistake, but it's still a lot of fun to be able to ask questions and hear various leaders answer.

Friday 1/9:
Amazon tour day - and boy was I impressed. The distribution center was amazing. I've been in a UPS plant, but this was even more mesmerizing. The amount of conveyors and automation was overwhelming and the rate at which the product moved through the facility was overwhelming. It was a great tour, and our tour guide did a fantastic job of explaining the process to us, but also offering us time to pause and just absorb everything that was happening. Amazon also did another great Q&A session after the plant tour - but this time with some of the LFM grads currently working there. Overall, this was my favorite plant tour of Week 1!

Friday 1/9 evening and Saturday 1/10:
Free time in Reno! Friday was spent out enjoying the city - we found a local brewery that turned into a bar with a live band. It was great for dancing and we shut it down around 3 AM. Saturday was spent relaxing and enjoying the NFL playoffs. About 6 of us locked ourselves in one of the hotel rooms and watched the games back to back. The only thing that pulled us outside was In-and-Out burger for dinner. :) It was nice to relax and of course catch up on sleep. Up until then I'd been averaging less than 6 hours a night.

Coming next... week 2!

And all of a sudden...

.. the semester is done.

Ok, not as exciting as you might have hoped, but it's hard to believe that I am now halfway through my academic requirements for school and that's exciting for me. Something to consider... with two degrees being earned, it's comparable to me already earning one. ;) Ok, I know it doesn't quite work that way, but I got to motivate myself somehow. What's left? Well, a lot, actually - 2 more semesters of school, a 6-month internship and writing a thesis.  Piece of cake, right?

From what I've heard, the Summer and first Fall semesters are the two most difficult, and as far as workload, I think I'd agree. The Core classes weren't overly difficult material wise, but the quantity of work at the end of the semester was definitely intense. During the last 2 1/2 weeks of school (classes & finals week), I had the following to do:

- 1 individual and 1 team assignment for my engineering class (each required easily 20+ hours of work)
- final exam in my engineering class
- 8 page research paper & 15 minute presentation for Power & Negotiaton
- 15 page research paper for Organization Processes and 20 minutes presentation for Communication (forunately, both were on the same project)
- Economics final exam
- Accounting final exam

As I've found throughout the entire semester, unless you decide to give up on sleep and socializing, you can't do it all to the level you want to. So, I ended up focusing on the classes where getting an A was most important to me. For various reasons specific to me, I selected Accounting, Communications and my engineering class. This meant the other classes, although I still did a lot of work for them, took the back burner.

I'm not yet sure how the grades will turn out, but the one thing I've come to realize is that it's not so important. As I studied for finals and worked on final projects, I discovered that I actually learned a lot in my classes. It might sound totally cheesy (and I admit I question how useful some of the material is) but it's really rewarding to know that I've come out of this with a little more knowledge. Afterall, I quit my comfy job in the warmth of Southern California and came to grad school with the intention to gain knowledge and skills to help me in my career. It's re-affirming to know that as I "suffer" through the long nights, the rising credit card bills and the crazy wind chill factor, I'm accomplishing what I wanted.

With that slightly serious note, I'll end with some pictures from our social activities of the end of the semseter.




Maureen, Becca & I - with Rob "ruining" the photo from the background. ;)



Drew, Anuj, Jon, Lisa (Drew's SO) & Nitida sporting their ugly Holiday grab.



Me, Margo, Jeremy, Maureen, Mike G and Becca in the warmth of Dapo & Abishek's during the LFM end of the year/semester party.



Outside after the end of the year party - my last night in Boston included some light snow and brisk temps in the 20's. Fortunately, I left town before the major storms hit.

Coming next, some updates from/about the January LFM activities - plant trek and InternshipFest...

Sometimes classes get in the way...

I think the biggest challenge about LFM and MIT, is not understanding what you're learning in classes but managing your time - there are WAY more things to do on any given day than you have time for. They've actually coined a term here called FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. With so many opportunities, one feels like they have to do everything to get the most of the experience. And, in any given day there's dozens of things to balance: classes, company presentations, club meetings, internship search/networking, general socializing ... oh, and don't forget homework & studying. It's really a miracle anything gets done.

One neat thing I've been able to be involved in, that's a bit different from the normal LFM activities, is something called Retail Lab. My team is working with Victoria's Secret helping them improve their peak holiday season hiring strategy. It's a pretty neat experience for a few reasons: one, it gives me the opportunity to meet Sloanies that I wouldn't otherwise meet, and two, I'm getting exposure to an industry that I'm interested in but have had no previous opportunity to be involved with.

Company presentations are another big thing in the Fall and can sometimes be tough to manage, since LFMs don't have to recruit through the normal channels for an internship, attending a company presentation is really only necessary if it's a company you think you might want to work for after graduating.  In which case, it never hurts to begin the networking.

And, speaking of jobs, the past few weeks have been a flurry of internship & interviewing activity. The '09s all returned from their internships to interview with the partner companies for full time positions.  3 days of interviews, and a lot of people had pretty full days. Additionally, the off-cycle internships for our class have all been posted and the discussion of whether or not to submit a cover letter and resume has been a popular convo around the office. This year there are 12 off-cylce internships, which, if they all get filled, would be the most off-cycle internships yet.  Going off-cycle is a tough decision, I actually spent a lot of time debating what I should do and for many reasons decided to stick with the normal cycle.

On the fun side, this Fall some of the LFM X's decided to start an IM hockey team.  One of our classmates played competitively in undergrad, so he's our coach.  But, most of us had no hockey experience. I had never played hockey and probably hadn't been on skates in around 10 years, but it turns out it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be... and I had a blast!

All in all the Fall is as busy as they said it would be!

As always, if you want to hear about something specific, let me know!