Maggie L. '12
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 »
Nov 23 2011
ICE, ICE baby
Posted in: Academics & Research
Margaret Mary Lloyd, where have you been?!
This is probably something my mom would say to me, but she never actually called me Margaret Mary, and my status as the youngest child meant she knew my location at all times throughout childhood.
It may be something you all are wondering, however, seeing that I’ve become the Disappearing Blogger I told myself I would never become. What happened to make me neglect my bloggership?
Well, senior year happened. And that’s certainly not a good enough excuse, nor is it a particularly unique one, but that’s the story I’m sticking to. I would like to take this time to announce that the Chemical Engineering class of 2012 has hit a monumental milestone in the last couple of weeks: the end of our first 8-week ICE course.
ICE, or Integrated Chemical Engineering, is our senior design class. We don’t have a thesis, we have ICE, and we’ve been hearing about it since we joined the department. When I say “hearing about it,” I mean “hearing about the... read the post »
Jul 26 2011
As I Was Saying…
Posted in: Miscellaneous
When I was applying for the GEL program as a sophomore, I heard a lot about the InternshipPlus requirement, but never thought much about it since it was a thing of the then distant future. Now, here I am, smack dab in the middle of my time in the GEL program and contemplating my current InternshipPlus experience as a biochem data analyst. As I mentioned in my last entry, the InternshipPlus is a requirement for GEL students in their second year of the program. Instead of meeting expectations, GEL students are challenged to make their internships a more meaningful experience by asking for more leadership opportunities and establishing a strong network within their organization.
There have been two main InternshipPlus assignments so far. I recently had a telephone conference with GEL staff and more than ten other fellow GEL students, in which we compared our summer experiences and found fellow GELs working in our area. About a week later, I wrote an initial report to describe not... read the post »