Summer is coming!

The second AdMIT weekend has come and gone. I met many members of the class of 2011 and was very impressed with what a great group of people they are. The activities kicked off on Thursday evening with a Women’s welcome reception and a pub gathering before we all headed to the South Asian C-Function. On Friday, the AdMITs had an action packed day but despite this I was very happy to see that many of them made it out to Red Velvet at the Suite. For anyone who has never been, Red Velvet is a great way to spend a Friday night. Great people, music, drinks, lighting, and dancing are just some of the features. Red Velvet is a creation of one of my classmates, Josh van Aalst, who brought extensive DJ experience and a load of talent to Sloan. If you haven’t come out yet, I hope to see you this Friday at the Suite!

School is, of course, winding down for the summer now and finals are coming up. This semester has been tremendous not only in the classroom but outside of class as well. One class in particular has been more than I ever thought any class could be. It is 15.846: Branding with Professor Mark Ritson. Since no words will ever do it justice, I will just say that it is one of those few classes that you don’t want to be over at the end of the semester. Prof. Ritson is not only extremely knowledgeable but he is one of the most charismatic people I have ever seen teach. He will be teaching Marketing in the fall so for those of you in the class of 2011, keep him in mind!

As always, life at Sloan has been very busy and exciting. Over the past month since my last posting, I have participated in the Sloan Service Spectacular, gone to the Brazilian, Texas, and South Asian C-Functions, and participated in a marketing case competition at Babson’s Olin School of Management. My good friend and classmate Calvin Cheung actually won the competition with a great presentation that the company executives really liked. I finished second but that really wasn’t what mattered. The whole experience was a great learning opportunity as we were on teams with MBAs from other schools and we had about 4 hours to put together our recommendations and then present them to the company executives.

The next two weeks will be filled with studying and finalizing projects. Speaking of projects, I just gave a presentation this morning in my pricing class on what iTunes and the digital music industry could do to capture market share in the age of piracy. It was a very interesting project where we actually ended up disproving our hypothesis, but then again, if we knew the answers ahead of time we wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

This Sunday will be the annual Sloan Olympics. Come out for lots of laughs because I have signed up for pretty much every event. I will let you know later how well I can run 1600 Meters after a bat-spin-relay! In any case, Sunday is also Mother’s Day so don’t forget to tell your mom you love her.

I will be a pilot this fall so I cannot wait to greet the class of 2011 and welcome them to campus in the fall. As always, if anyone has any questions about anything feel free to e-mail me: deirdreh@mit.edu. Finally, I will continue posting over the summer and I will update everyone on my summer internship as it progresses and any other summer activities so check back often. Happy Spring! J