Maggie L. '12
Apr 17 2012
Simulating Catastrophe
Posted in: Miscellaneous
I don’t know if your school does this, but MIT asks its students at the end of each semester to fill out course evaluations. Professors do make adjustments based on student evaluations, but sometimes I wonder if I’m giving feedback or just sending my opinions into a black box.
We did something similar in GEL last year: At the end of the fall semester, each of the GEL students evaluated one another based on leadership and performance within a group.
Now I understand how professors feel. I couldn’t believe how such a diverse group of students had one, clear piece of advice for me: speak up! At least half of the comments said something like “your ideas are valuable, but you tend to keep quiet during meetings.”
So before the spring semester started, I heard there was an opening for a section leader position in a weekly Engineering Leadership Lab (ELL). Section leaders are the three students in their second year of GEL ("GEL 2's") in charge of one of the three ELL sections. I kind... read the post »
Feb 10 2012
Pics or it didn’t happen?
Posted in: Miscellaneous
As I mentioned last week, MIT is a place for talkin’. Looking at the photos from the speech competition, it’s clear that we were fully invested in our stories.
The contestants, from top to bottom, left to right: Kate Rudolph, "Tetrahedron Packing" // Will Drevo, "A Man Named King" // Jeff Lin, "B" // Samuel Markson, "A Physicist's Elevator Pitch for the Real World" // Charles Huang, "Ice Cream Battleground" // Josh Wancura, "The Gas Gauge" // Anisha Gururaj, "Gems of Humanity" // Maggie Lloyd, "Julia Child" // Sam Shames, "Proving You Can Dream" // Andrew Wang, "The Three S's" // Halla Moore, "Perseverance" // Priyanka Chatterjee, "From Generation to Generation" // Bruno Faviero, "Vision" // Bruna Moscol, "Our Essence" // Jennifer Wang, "Two Poems by Taylor Mali"
It was incredible to hear how 15 different MIT students interpreted the “Proving Them Wrong” theme, and I got a request to share more videos from the competition. I tracked... read the post »
Feb 4 2012
MIT Can Talk!
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Life & Culture
I've talked about how humor, networking, and great ideas are all important items that engineers should add to their personal wish list. Now it's time to blog about something I feel particularly passionate about: public-speaking.
Whenever I tell people I'm a theater minor at MIT, there are the occasional snickers, like "why does a chemical engineer want to be an actor, too?" But to me, it's not about acting. Fundamentally, it's about being comfortable standing in front of an audience and trying to convince them of something. GEL has taught me that this can mean the difference between killing a company presentation or missing yet another promotion.
Perhaps this is what led Tony Eng, a course VI senior lecturer, to organize the inaugural MIT Can Talk speech competition this IAP. He learned about a similar event at Harvard, and decided that MIT would be the perfect setting to show that engineers can communicate through words as well as they do through numbers and figures. The theme?... read the post »
Dec 14 2011
Why did the engineer cross the road?
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Life & Culture
While you guys anxiously await admissions decisions, I have one piece of advice: smile :) I wrote this entry a few weeks ago, but wanted to save it for finals week / early action decisions pandemonium as reminder not to take life too seriously.
As a senior, I’ve been on the prowl for post-graduation opportunities. This means talking to the career office, going to info sessions, and wading through the internet’s many offerings of chemical engineering industry opportunities.
Recently, I came upon this one for a junior polymer engineer at a hydrocarbon recovery plant.
Can I just point out that a sense of humor is “essential” for this career?
A posting for another opportunity said, “Technical applicants must be able to demonstrate proficiency in at least one programming language. Sense of humor required…Seriously.”
All of a sudden, I’m starting to see that humor is valued as much as other "typical" applicant qualities, which leaves me wondering how in the world it makes... read the post »
Dec 8 2011
Lesson Planning
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Academics & Research
You’ve read in my blog entries about the weekly Engineering Leadership Laboratories (ELLs), and one thing I’ve realized since I became a second-year GEL student (hereafter referred to as a “GEL 2”) is that the ELLs take a lot of behind-the-scenes planning.
ELLs are two-hour activities on Fridays that give GELs hands-on experience in our “Capabilities of Effective Engineering Leaders.” Some examples from earlier this semester include:
Diverse Connections
Resourcefulness
Urgency to Deliver, Initiative, and Decision Making
It’s safe to say that the GEL 2s devote at least ten hours a week to help plan each ELL, with most of the work happening in our weekly GEL 2 meetings on Tuesday nights. Most ELLs are recycled from the previous year with minor adjustments, but the end of the semester features a student-planned ELL that calls upon the GEL 2s to conceive and operate a unique ELL.
We started planning the December 2 Student-Run ELL a few weeks before... read the post »