[Anne] Heading out of Boston soon!

Well….my last real week in Boston is here. I will leave town to go back to Virginia for the summer after the MLOG Re-connect Day, but I am planning on returning for graduation in a few weeks. Truth to tell, I feel quite strange now that everything has been turned in. I have been working “full steam ahead” for so many weeks now finishing up my thesis and executive summary that it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that it’s all over and done with.

Now that I actually have a few moments to process some of the past year, I will leave you with some of my final thoughts that I would have liked someone to have told me when I came to Boston last summer.

1. Is it a lot of work?
Yes, but you can do it! I had a rather chaotic summer last year due to events outside my control, so by the time I came to Boston I was already rather stressed out. I remember Rida telling me during orientation that I worried too much and that everything would work out okay. It seemed hard to believe at the time, but sure enough, she was absolutely right.

2. Set some of your priorities early on when you get here.
You will find that some people will spend hours practicing case interviews in September, others will start their thesis in August, some will take more classes than you’d even believe if I told you, and some will broaden their horizons by attending courses at other colleges such as Harvard Business School . There’s no “one right answer” here for this one. People have different priorities as to what they want to do in the long-run. The main thing is that before you get here, I’d encourage you to think about what you really want to get out of the experience. Then…go for it!

3. Take advantage of what MIT has to offer.
I attended some really interesting lectures this year about topics from disaster relief to RFID…but not as many as I could have in hindsight. The community of learning at MIT is something really to be cherished while you’re here, so check out the calendar of events periodically on the MIT website and let your brain rest from your classes while you learn about something completely different for an hour!

4. Thank your family and friends in advance for supporting you throughout this program.
I knew a one-year Master’s degree at MIT would be an intense experience going into it, but I didn’t know until later how much I would come to depend on my family and friends to make it successfully through the program. Even when you feel busiest, take the time to enjoy yourself during your breaks from school. It sounds trite, but you really do need it.

5. Go to a Red Sox game! Other than the weather (which is unpleasant most of the time), Boston has a ton to offer.
One of my favorite experiences was taking in a Red Sox game with my fiancé on a weekend visit…even if you’re not a huge baseball fan, it’s such a great cultural experience! Other Boston/New England favorites of mine…the restaurants of the North End, a car ride to Cape Cod, or an afternoon train ride to a random seaport town like Rockport.

Okay, that should be enough of my ranting for a while J Last thoughts…if you’re nervous about the speed and intensity of the program, as I was when I started…I am here to tell you that yes, it goes by incredibly fast, and yes, it is intense. So plan ahead, work hard, and then enjoy the ride.

Comments

[Ting Wu]

The main thing is that before you get here, I’d encourage you to think about what you really want to get out of the experience.runescape gold:http://www.playerassist.com/runescape/

[Jose L. Noguer]

Hi!

Here I am again with a couple more suggestions for future posts...

Seems all of you are now almost done with the MLOG and figured perhaps you'd want to do some sort of recaps... I had in mind rankings like the ones in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity...

Suggestions:
1) Top 5 courses you have to take while on MLOG
2) Top 5 things to do while in Boston (kind of covered by Anne here...)
3) Top 5 professors
4) Top 5 companies you'd want to work for after MLOG

I guess you can come up with a couple more if you want...

Best regards,
JLN