Two semesters down, two to go (redux)

I just finished up final exams/projects on Wednesday. They capped a long, hard semester where I learned that graduate school is not exactly like the undergrad experience. For example, there was a lot less partying and a lot more commuting.

Um, wasn't exactly like this...

Last night I posted my highlights for the semester from the engineering perspective on my EECS blog. On this blog, I’ll list some highlights from the LGO/Sloan side (in no particular order):

• My Sloan core team. There were six of us (including myself). We really hit it off from the very beginning in the orientation activities, and we were able to keep it going the whole semester.  My group included a girl from Senegal, a guy from Korea, a guy from the Dominican Republic, a girl from Peru and a girl who partially grew up in France. All very nice people, and I really learned a lot from them throughout the semester about their cultures. The group reflects the general level of multi-culturalism at Sloan (I think it is over 50% international at this point), which was something I definitely was not expecting, but was probably the best part of the whole experience.
  

  OP class - seriously, we didn't pose for this photo...

• On that note, the one C-function I went to (Korea) was also a highlight. Done really professionally, I didn’t realize that companies actually sponsor these things for tens of thousands of dollars. Very impressive and Erika and I had a lot of fun (and it included free beer and food). I’m going to try to get to more of these next semester.
  

  A fan dance by Sloanies

• The Sloan sponsored Oktoberfest was also awesome. It included free sausage, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, good beer (are you sensing a theme here?) and a sweet German oompah-band.
  

  This isn't the band that played, but you get the idea...

• Out of all my Sloan classes I enjoyed Marketing, with Professor Mark Ritson, the most. Our case studies ranged from Snapple to Wal-mart, and he had a lot of real world experience, especially in luxury brands (which was fun). He told stories about working for Louis Vuitton where they would actually burn $10,000 extra handbags while drinking cognac and smoking cigars rather than put them on sale (true story!). He also explained how retail stores like Wal-Mart and Costco have so much leverage over brands. For reference, see the recent flap between Costco and Coca-Cola (guess who won?) As a direct result of this class, I’m going to get a Costco membership: they sell $160 Dom P champagne bottles for $80, and their store brand champagne ($10 a bottle) is rated a 94 out of 100 on the champagne quality scale (plus they have those trampolines up front!) Ritson will probably kill me for posting this seeing as how he works for Dom Perignon and I know he reads my blogs…
  

  Costco brand champagne

• The SIP (Sloan Innovation Period) class put on by our LGO leadership committee on how to motivate under-performers in real organizations. This was the first year that LGOs had to take SIP classes in the fall semester, and our leadership committee really stepped up to the plate to negotiate the bureaucracy and offer this class to LGOs for credit. It ended up being a great class for me, because I had never managed a group where motivation was a problem, but that is definitely a major (and delicate) part of a typical managers job. It was great to hear from classmates (Steve Smith, Min, Steve Lee, and Tim McIntosh among others) who had actually been there talk about their approaches.  Good stuff that is really practical knowledge – in general all the “leadership labs” that have been put on by our fellow LGO students have been great – a real highlight of the program for me and exactly what I wanted to get out of LGO.
• The Sales club sponsored three day Sales training class. This was also very practical and valuable outside of class knowledge, and I would recommend that everybody take it. Among other things sales related, the instructor basically taught us how to write emails to high level executives that optimize your chance of actually getting responses. Since taking the course, I have actually used his techniques and they really do work (valuable for company liaisons on the internship committee to take…)
• The trip to the Michigan-Notre Dame game that I went on with my friends Tim, Bayan and Todd. I think 8 LGO ’11s went to Michigan as undergrads, and pretty much all of them went to this game, so we had a good crew out there.
  

  Superfans

• Last but not least, LGO ice hockey.  Awesome. I can’t really skate or play hockey, but it is good times. We even had a bunch of local alums show up and play with us.  I figured out that a good way to defend is to dive all over the ice – more surface area when you’re horizontal, and I turn my fat ass into an advantage that way, rather than a liability.
  

  We're not really as good as the uniforms and gear make us appear

That’s a lot for now, there was a lot of other cool experiences this semester but didn’t quite make the cut given the time I have to write this post (on the bubble, as they say). Those include competing in the 100K elevator pitch competition, an American Airlines case competition, and all the talks and seminars that I went to. I do have a blog post about a lot of that stuff on my EECS blog.

I plan on writing a few more blog posts over the next couple weeks, definitely one about my internship at Raytheon which is really exciting.

But right now, I’m gonna go play some video games…and maybe shovel a little bit…

Big Daddy - you're going down...