Jenny Kwan, MBA '09

Integration

Surprisingly (or not), the class a lot of people thought was a bit 'soft' brought everything together quite nicely today.  What we had learned so far in our Communications course - mandatory as part of the Core set of courses - was in extensive use today.

A random team member was selected to present a group case analysis in Economics this morning.  You could see some teams had taken some of the Communications advice to heart in terms of structure, slide content and presenting style.  This was also supplemented by tips given by one of the lunch-time speakers last week, Gene Zelazny, the business presentations guru from McKinsey.

The afternoon brought another presentation demonstrating the use of Visual Aids - like a lot of things at MIT it was hands on as we had to create our own presentations in advance to be critiqued.  It is quite satisfying to be usefully applying one lesson one week to another just one week after.

Irrationality

"You are all irrational!" - not the usual thing you would expect yelled at a class full of MBA students at a place like MIT.  But our OP (Organisational Processes) professor was completely serious.

We are being introduced to the irrationality of the actions of people, being shown how people are persuaded and how power and authority just adds to the general mess.  Next in OP is ethics - it should be interesting to see what we learn there and how it will add to the already heated debates we've had about it in our accounting class.

Survival

"Don't worry, you'll survive" - said just about every second-year I had a conversation with.

Survival?!  That was the least of my worries!  I love being back at school so far and what not to miss out on was my concern.

2 weeks into it all and the workload is piling up.  Like a tidal wave in the distance I can see all the cases, problem sets, team assignments, recruiting and club commitments looming on the horizon...

Survive?  I hope so, but in any case there is no doubt that the ride will be fun!

Get involved!

Day two of classes and things are heating up.  It's not bad so far, but like the quiet before the storm I can feel the tidal wave of readings, assignments and everything else building up.  It's a perfect time to get involved with everything else that's going on around Sloan and MIT!

Time here is precious, and I for one came not only for the academic program but also for the huge number of other exciting things that are going on here at MIT - the Energy Club has definitely caught my eye, I'm also looking at Net Impact (sustainability and development), 100K Business plan competition, other entrepreneurship related clubs (Sales, VP/PE, Innovation, Techlink...) and likely also the salsa club :-)

A big part of being here is making choices and it's starting already with multiple interesting conflicting events happening at least once per day.  My advice?  Find what fires you up and just get involved!