MBlog

[Tai] Classy class of 2006: Part I

It’s my pleasure to introduce you the MLOG class of 2006. Our class is pretty small (27 people) but believe it or not, we are from 13 different countries! Despite the average working experience of 7 years and the median GMAT of 715 (I’m on the left side of both curves! :p), we are a fun and cool group of people. Let’s get to know us a little better.

Anup: Recently, Louis has awarded this guy the most enthusiastic person of the year. I also award him and his wife Andy, the coolest couple of the year. He has a special talent of modeling anything in the world using system dynamics. I mean ANYTHING...  You name it.

Yimin: Yimin is from China though he had worked in many countries all around the world. If you don’t find him with Sam or Yi Fang, you can find him in New York.

Dimitri: Dimitri is the first member of the Greek mafia who never stepped into ESD260 class before 8:05AM. He is a professional salsa dancer, but none of us has seen him dance before. I hope we will get a chance to see him dance before we graduate.

Louis: Louis is a French Canadian with more than 12 years of experience. He has special talent of speaking in class which makes him every professors’ favorite student. He has done a lot for our class including driving to Costco every few months to buy soda for all of us. Thanks!

Rida: Rida is one of the bloggers here so you may have already known her. She is talented in many areas including singing which we just found out when we went karaoke together. She’s going to consulting, but still scared of staying at hotel alone at night.

Tony: Tony is also a blogger here. He doesn’t speak a lot but whenever he speaks you know you will hear something great and insightful.

Anne: It's hard to believe that this super sweet girl  used to be an auditor! As you might have known, she is getting married right after graduation. I’m very happy for her. Congratulations Anne!

Petros: He's the second member of greek mafia gang. You can find him at E40 loading dock, in front ot E51, or in front of warehouse dorm. His plan is to get another MBA degree next year (eh, or a PhD?). Best of luck!

Yi: You have to be very lucky to hear this guy speaks. Yi is a very good student. He reads a lot of textbooks, many of which are not required for class. This is impressive because in some busy weeks I can't even finish the mandatory reading!

Well… it might take me a while to introduce all 27 of us. So let me stop here for today… Rida, Anne, Tony: you are welcome to take over this list. Otherwise, I’ll come back and write the rest when I am done with my thesis.  :)

[Tai] Four seasons @ MIT

It's hard to believe that it has been almost 8 months already since we first started the MLOG orientation. Time flies... but as Anne said, I look at the world in a very different way than I did 8 months ago.

This is also my first spring here in the U.S. Being from the country with 3 seasons: summer, raining summer and burning summer, I find the change of seasons to be exciting!

Summer 2005 was the time we arrived in Cambridge and started the orientation. The orientation was 3 weeks long for international students and 2 weeks long for US students... I haven't thanked Chris in person for this great preparation for our life at MIT. We covered everything from stat to regression to optimization... the stuffs that most people learned in their undergrad and threw them away to allow more space in our left brain to think about things at work

Fall was the time when things started to kick in. We had several mandatory classes, and some people including myself were brave enough to take 5-6 classes at the same time. What can I say.. we're only here for a year and there are so many great classes to take! Long study hours, free coffee, and sleepless nights were common for many of us... but the parties and activities kept us alive!

Winter in Boston was so nice to us this year... or maybe we escaped the worst part to enjoy warm weather in Spain. We had ZLOG students taking class with us in January when we had a bunch of companies coming in to give presentations and recruitings. We also had a month-long supply chain simulation game that we competed with the other groups for the highest stock price... Noone went bankrupt, but some teams' stock charts looked like those of dot-bomb companies back in late 90s.

And here comes Spring! We started to seriously work on the thesis this semester at the same time that we seriously started looking for jobs... companies continued to come in and recruit at MIT while many of us were busy flying around the world for the final round interviews. I had to admit that I didn't study much in the first half of spring semester due to frequent interview trips... I promised to myself to study hard again after I accepted the job offer, but it is hard to stay in and do the work when the weather outside is so great! Enjoy Spring everyone! :)

[Tai] Hello from Tai

Welcome :)

I personally like blogging because here at MIT there are just sooooo many things I want to remember and blogging helps me keep track of those little small things that happen each day. I know Anne, Rida and Tony have told you what we are all up to right now... so let me share with you something else outside the lab and the classrooms. :)

Maybe you might have heard about MIT hacks before. One of the most famous hacks is the police car on the dome in 1994...  The latest one that just happened yesterday is the brassy move of Caltech cannon to MIT.  The cool part is that it comes with a giant MIT class ring!

So that's why I don't mind if the shuttle dumps me... there are so many fun things to see on the way from my dorm to school!

Have a great day!