A day in the life – spring semester

Along the same line as my post back in July, here’s a running diary of my Friday February 19, 2010:

8:00AM – Wake up after multiple snooze button presses and get ready for the day.  Kerin was up before for work early today so she took care of walking Charlie Murphy.

8:40AM – Walk about 300 yards to the subway station where I catch the train to campus.  I live at the Davis Square stop and MIT is at the Kendall stop.  I can get from my front door to a class in about 20 minutes when the trains are running on time.

9:00AM – Get to the LGO office about an hour before my first class for the day so I have a chance to talk to a few people and restock the LGO store.  The store is a student run alternative to the vending machines around school.  A group of us volunteers every semester to make costco runs to buy snacks, sodas, and other items in bulk.  We then sell them at a small margin and use the proceeds at the end of the year to party.

10:00AM – Friday’s are recitation days for some of my classes.  The system dynamics session today covers some of the topics on the homework that will be due next week.

11:30AM – I grab lunch from the Sloan cafeteria and eat in the LGO office with other people.

12:00PM – I meet with my tiger teams group and an academic advisor.  We’re working with a company called EnerNOC this semester to evaluate and offer improvement ideas for their supply chain.

1:00PM – Marketing Strategy class.  This is my only “official” class that meets on a Friday and it’s only a half semester class so I can deal with it.  Today’s class is a case discussion examining the business strategy differences between Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

2:30PM – Meet with my tiger team again to visit EnerNOC at their corporate offices in downtown Boston.

3:00PM – We arrive at EnerNOC and spend the next hour and a half learning about their current supply chain and asking numerous questions to help us understand what we should spend the semester working on.

4:30PM – I meet up with Kerin downtown because EnerNOC is a few blocks from her office.  We ride the train back to Davis Square.

5:15PM – Davis Square is a great little neighborhood with lots of shops, restaurants, and bars.  We grab a couple of sandwiches at a deli right near the subway station on our walk back to our apartment.

6:15PM – We take the subway to Harvard Square to meet a bunch of other people for a Harvard vs. Cornell hockey game.  There are a couple of Cornell alums in LGO and they wanted to watch the Big Red beat up on Harvard.  Cornell won 3-0 and it wasn’t even that close.

9:00PM – A group of us go back to Davis Square for BBQ at Red Bones.

10:30PM – We walk over to Spirit Bar a few blocks away to hang out and watch some of the Olympics.  Women’s curling was on and everyone in the bar was getting into the match.  I guess beer makes any sporting event more exciting.

1:00AM – We walk home from the bar after a long but fun day.    

Spring classes and waiting for the internship decisions

Two weeks ago was internship fest which has been covered in some of the other LGO blogs, so I won’t rehash it here.  Suffice it to say I did 19 interviews in 3 days.  It was definitely an interesting process.  We ranked our preferences for what jobs we liked last Friday and now we’re all waiting to see what the results of the algorithm will be and who we’ll be working for.  We should know by sometime next week if everything goes smoothly.  I recommended that we reveal the internship matches in a big group with a game show (press your luck) theme, but I’m not sure we’ll get to have that much fun. 

Classes started last week and I’m taking just shy of a full load this semester.  I also front loaded my classes so after spring break I will only be in a classroom nine hours per week.  I should have lots of time to enjoy the weather. 

15.025 – Game Theory – This is primarily a theory based class taught by a professor from UC Berkley.  He covers a variety of types of “games” typically encountered in real life and we discuss how players should and do react.

15.615 – Business Law – Taught by a former lawyer, this has been interesting so far.  Topics cover the basics of things like product liability, fiduciary responsibility, and real life legal cases that have affected businesses and managers.

15.665 – Power and Negotiation – This course is simulation based meaning every week we work in groups to learn from simulated negotiating scenarios.  We are able to try different styles with no risk.  It’s nice to practice negotiating a job offer before it’s the real deal.

15.834 – Strategic Marketing – An all case based class covering topics like quantifying customer service scores to make investment decisions.

15.871 – System Dynamics – One of the most well known topics taught at Sloan because it was invented here.  This is an interesting class about how  to model complex systems.  Our first homework assignment was to build a model that replicated data from the SARS outbreak in Taiwan in 2003.

ESD.267 – Supply Chain Planning – This is an engineering class that many LGOs take (there are 25 of us in the class this semester).  It is a good foundational course for topics like inventory policy, postponement, and supplier management.

ESD.941 – Tiger Teams – Project based class where teams of 3 to 5 of us work with area businesses on real industry problems.  My team is working with EnerNoc, a company that among other things works to coordinate demand responses during peak energy events.  We will be working to improve the supply chain they use to get monitoring equipment delivered and installed for new clients.