Monday, December 20, 2010

Thoughts on the fall semester

The semester's over, and I'm back home now in NJ for winter break. I'm going to relax and spend some time with family and friends in NJ and NY before heading back to Boston in time for our domestic plant trek in January.

As you may have inferred by the lack of posts from my classmates and me over the past few weeks, December was a busy month. And as much as you try to spread the workload out over the semester (which I didn't), the last few weeks are pretty hectic with final projects and final exams. But now that we're done for a few weeks, I wanted to write about how the semester went.

Overall, it's been a great experience so far, I'm glad I decided to come to MIT, and I'm really looking forward to the remaining 1.5 years of the program.

My main thoughts on the fall semester-

Yes, business school is soft. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things I was least looking forward to about school was having to take "soft" classes like communications or organizational processes. I like structure, numbers and analysis, which these subjects don't have for the most part.

After the first two semesters, I feel a little differently about it. I didn't love those classes and probably would still rather spend my time learning more tangible skills, but I can see why they should be included as part of the core curriculum at business schools. At some point, I'll (hopefully) be running a group or organization, and there are certain softer skills that you absolutely need as a manager. I think these classes really do provide you with some solid tools to use and think about as your career progresses. What I really didn't expect, though, was how helpful it was to hear about my classmates' thoughts and experiences. With so many different backgrounds within the Sloan class, the perspectives people brought to discussions were sometimes beyond the scope of anything I would have thought about.

That being said, I still feel like the curriculum and overall attitude is a little too soft. Sloan is known to be one of the more analytically rigorous among the top b-schools. Even still, there were certain classes (like econ and marketing) that I thought could have benefited from being more quantitative, but for some reason the professors started to get apologetic when we had to use math. Come on, it's MIT! It bothers me that business school is sometimes viewed from the outside as a place where you learn few real skills other than how to network and recruit for jobs. I totally disagree with that view, but I can see why it exists.

Being an LGO amongst Sloanies is tricky. As a few of us have written about before, it's really easy as an LGO to get caught up in the program and the LGO class and not fully take advantage of what other Sloanies have to offer. I thought I did an OK job balancing the two this semester. My Sloan score team was fantastic, and I got to know them and a few others pretty well. Beyond that, I probably didn't interact enough with others in the class. I realized this towards the end of the semester at a few section-wide and Sloan-wide events, where I felt like I was meeting people for the first time despite being in the same classes all semester.

The extent to which LGOs choose to integrate into the Sloan class varies significantly. If you choose to do so, it can be a little difficult since our schedules are different than theirs. We take a couple of more classes, but most of them are constantly focused on internship recruiting. Also, I've noticed that a lot of Sloanies don't have the most favorable view of LGOs. We're known to hang out only with each other and often have to miss meetings or other core team commitments because of schedule conflicts. Whether or not you choose to integrate is a personal decision and depends on what you're trying to get out of the program. But I really think it's a bad choice to not venture outside of LGO at all. I'm going to try to do a better job of it next semester.

Breadth > depth, for me. One of the tougher decisions you have to make as an LGO student is what type of school-life balance you want to maintain. For me, despite taking 7 classes, it was important to be social, participate in a few extracurricular activities, go to the gym pretty regularly, get away from Boston for a couple weekends, and of course get enough sleep. Other than during the last few weeks of the semester, it wasn't difficult at all to maintain that balance. However, one of the big trade-offs was that I couldn't give every class 100% effort. This wasn't easy to accept, since it goes against what I'm used to. I really wish I could have devoted more time to one of my engineering classes in particular, which was difficult but really interesting.

Thinking to next semester and how I want to do things, I thought about whether it would be better to take fewer classes so that I could devote more time to each one, and especially focus on those that I particularly enjoy. For now I've decided to load up once again. These last two springs semesters will be my last opportunities (probably ever) to take classes, so I'd rather be exposed to a lot of different things. I'm not sure this is the best route to take, and I can see why people want to do it differently. It's one of the tougher calls you have to make in school and especially in the LGO program.

That's all for now. This was a long post, so if you've made it this far, thanks and happy holidays. And to prospective students who just submitted applications, good luck. I hope this blog's helpful as you decide whether or not LGO is right for you.