The internship interview process is pretty interesting. We have 15-20 interviews over the course of just a few days, and then rank the different projects based on our preferences. The companies rank us, and then a magic matching algorithm does the rest. It sounds pretty exhausting, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. For the most part, I found the interviewers to be pretty friendly and helpful in clarifying what the internship projects would involve. Now, we wait a couple weeks to find out where we'll live for 6 months of our lives. It's kind of exciting to think that a few months from now, I could be in Europe, Texas, Chicago, California, Brazil.... who knows? I like that.
Anyway, this semester I'm taking 6 classes-
Managerial Accounting- learning about how accounting impacts business decisions and how to interpret the many grey areas within accounting, given that it often can be very subjective. I like the professor a lot, and it seems interesting so far.
System Dynamics- A classic Sloan class. The field deals with thinking about organizations as complex systems, where outcomes are affected by so many factors that lie beyond our standard mental models of how the world works.
Supply Chain Planning- A required class for the Engineering Systems track in LGO. I've never taken a supply chain class before, so I'm pretty excited about it.
Airline Management- A random engineering class I'm taking just because it sounds interesting. It involves learning about how airlines plan their fleets, design networks, and deal with pricing and revenue management.
Pricing- This class doesn't start until the second half of the semester. It's a marketing class that focuses on pricing strategies. It's supposed to be a really cool class and great professor.
Tiger Teams- Also known as Operations Lab. It's a semester-long project where teams of students act as consultants for small- or medium-size businesses within the area. My team is going to work with a start-up company in the energy industry. I don't think I can say much more than that right now, but hopefully I'll write more about this as the semester goes on.
Between classes and a few big extracurricular commitments - planning Open House for the LGO Class of 2013, the Sloan Sports Conference, and choreographing a dance for the South Asian C-Function, I think the first half of the semester will be pretty busy. I like being back in a routine though. Break was nice, but I felt pretty useless after a couple of weeks of not really having any responsibilities or making any real decisions. That definitely changed pretty quickly.
