It has been over a month since I’ve posted on my blog and you can understand the reason from my title! Sloan has once again proved to be so full of opportunities that one could only experience all if days were 48 hours.
First let me start with SIPs. SIP stands for Sloan Innovation Period. The idea is that unlike the 13 week long semester, Sloan has a 6-1-6 semester where during that one week in the middle, students are exposed to workshops with lots of experiential leadership learning from outside industry speakers and also faculty. I personally think that the idea behind SIP is great and if some of the workshops could be improved, SIP could be a great differentiation point for Sloan as mentioned in one of our Senate meetings.
My SIP experience was a pretty good one and I really bid for the workshops I wanted to get in which turned out to be a good call. And that actually is another area where SIP could be improved because there is a certain number of SIPs you need to take in order to graduate and that results in us bidding for workshops we are not interested in but will only help us fill up the credits. The school and the senate are working on ways to find solutions to this.
To start off, one of the best SIPs I took was called World Class Public Speaking and it was given by the Toastmaster World Champion, Darren LaCroix! It was experiential but moreover, he also gave us guidelines as to how to better our presentation skills. He showed us his first presentations and his championship one for us to see the difference. At the end he asked for volunteers to go and give a presentation and gave critical! feedback. I gathered my courage to go up as well and my presentation was far from perfect which was even better because I found his feedback very useful. Hopefully, I can use some of his tips to be a more effective presenter.
Another SIP I enjoyed a lot was “How to be a great leader”. In this SIP that took one whole day, I learned a lot. I learned the way different leaders in government or private sector employ different methods of moving their people and organizations forward. It was also filled with small hands on learning activities which I found to be both useful and fun. I would recommend anyone who didn’t take these classes this year for the next SIP period.
Yes, one week where we had sort of a break from the hectic classes and right after that, Midterms! We had three in one week which I thought was just brutal… It was also a big test of efficient time management which I guess I did OK!?
During all the SIP and midterm week, one huge thing in my life was co-organizing the European C Function. What are C functions I hear you saying : ) the c stands for cultural where on 2 or 3 Thursdays of the month, all of the Sloan school and their SOs gather in Walker Memorial (a huge space perfect for parties and gatherings) for a couple of hours of dining, drinking and being exposed to different cultures. Co-organizing the European C function was one of the best experiences I’ve had since coming to Sloan. Though my sleep average dropped to 4 hours a night, it was definitely worth it! In the c function, on the yummy side we had food tables from 10 different European countries, European wine and beer. On the content side, we had flamenco & belly dancers and on top of all that, the Eurovision song contest! I feel the need to explain Eurovision to non-Europeans : ). Eurovision is a song contest like American Idol but the difference is that European countries are represented and each performing country is voted by the other countries. So we had a somewhat similar version of that in our c function where Sloanies from different countries went on stage and we even had judges from other countries critique them. That was just plain hilarious to watch : ). At the end of the night, all the hard work was worth it as I saw my fellow Sloanies going crazy on the dance floor and coming up to us to say how great an event it was.
I’ll post the pictures in my next blog (just to keep the suspense : ))
