As my fellow bloggers have noted, our first semester at MIT Sloan is over. Whoa. And so, like most of my classmates, I'm home for the holidays. Over dinner, I was chatting with my brother (who is also in graduate school), and we had the following exchange:
Jocelyn's brother: Classes start back up for me on January 5th. How about you?
Jocelyn: [Laughs in his face] My spring semester doesn't start until February 7th.
Jocelyn's brother: I hate you.
ONE. WHOLE. MONTH. OF. FREE. TIME. Just another reason to love MIT -- it's IAP!
IAP (a.k.a. Independent Activities Period) is part of the MIT academic calendar. This year, from January 9 until February 3, we have a "winter break" that you can use to do just about anything. At Sloan, students seem to be using this time for various purposes, generally in ways that they hope will advance their careers.
What am I doing, you ask? (Or at least I'll pretend you asked, dear reader). For the month of January, I'll be doing an externship with a local tech startup called InsightSquared, along with two of my other Sloan classmates. InsightSquared, based in Cambridge, provides "data intelligence for small and medium businesses." We're still finalizing the details on the project we'll be working on, but it will likely be a project related to customer acquisition. At the end of IAP, I'll give a short report on my experience, and get academic credit. Pretty sweet deal.
And, right before IAP, I'll be going to Seattle and Silicon Valley with the MIT Sloan Tech Club to meet with a few top tech companies. Both of these experiences will hopefully get me much closer to my goal of working at a tech company after I graduate.
And what are other folks doing? Here's a sampling of things my friends are doing over IAP:
- going on the China Retail Trek to Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau with the Retail, CPG, and Luxury Goods club at Sloan
- taking a course called How to Process, Analyze and Visualize Data
- taking a course called How to Win at Texas Hold'em Poker (featuring some pretty amazing MIT statistical minds)
- working on a business idea as part of the MIT $100K ACCELERATE competition
- practicing, case-prepping, mock interviewing, and actually interviewing on-campus for roles in consulting, finance, and other industries, as part of summer internship recruiting
- meeting with venture capitalists (and going skiing and hot air ballooning!) in New Mexico
- celebrating Mardi Gras in New Orleans
- going on a cruise to Antarctica (!)
- sleeping. Lots and lots of sleeping.
In short, it's gonna be awesome.
I'll report back in January with more news on IAP, as will my fellow bloggers, I'm sure.
In the meantime, happy holidays and happy new year!
Proper management is always a whether in business or not. You are already good at this and it will be a big help later when you decide to start one.
Posted by: How to Start a Small Business | 12/28/2011 at 04:06 AM