It’s been an interesting opportunity to be able to link some of the lessons I’ve had in engineering leadership to life at MIT. At first I thought, hey leadership is leadership, right? But I quickly learned that leading a high school club or two is very different from leading a team of engineers in a technical project. There are deadlines to meet, specifications to write, different scales of implementation to consider, not to mention all the ethics, advocacy, and communication that are undoubtedly involved.

Now that my brass rat faces the other direction (as in, now that I’m an alumna), it’s time for me to introduce GEL’s latest blogger, Stanley Gill! I’ve worked with Stanley at The Tech for the past two years and know that he is not only an enthusiastic writer, but also a well-rounded student. He’s also known to be an adventurer from the desert who speaks music and Japanese and is never afraid to accept a challenge (within reason). I’ll let him take it from here.

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In high school, I spent a lot of time playing music. I was playing my beloved clarinet as well as marching competitively with my high school’s drumline. I was once apart of four different musical ensembles at the same time, was running on a diet of 99 cent chili cheese french fry burritos from Weinerschitzel (or if I got a long break to travel the extra block, some 99 cent tacos from taco bell), and would spend Saturday nights playing video games and complaining with my friends as to why we couldn’t get dates.

If you phrase my high school life like that, it may seem less surprising that I ended up at MIT. I mean, if you replace all references to music in that past paragraph with something about engineering or science, you might think you found your stereotypical MIT student.

My name is Stan Gill. I was born in the liberal, temperate region known as the bay area of northern California, where I lived until I was about 7. My family then shipped themselves to the extremely hot and conservative Arizona desert, where I spent the remainder of my pre-college days in the southeastern suburb of Phoenix known as Gilbert. Even though I spent most of my life in Arizona, I always considered myself to be from California; I like being near the ocean, being a stone’s throw away from an interesting city, using public transit, and eating better food. That’s not to say that Arizona doesn’t have those things, it just takes a lot longer to get there, and I’m too impatient for that.

What else would you like to know about me? I’m a little weird (don’t ask me to describe why, it’s very hard), I play video games and read in my spare time, I’m musical, oh yeah, and I like to think that I speak Japanese (I took it for 3 years in high school and for the last 3 semesters here). In terms of school, I’m a course 20 (bioengineering) and planning to minor in course 9 (brain and cognitive sciences). If you can’t find me in class, I’m commonly found with my course 9 UROP in building 46, in the Alpha Delta Phi house bro-ing out, or in The Tech’s news room helping to create that stack of paper you might be using as a prop for your next play or as a coaster for the water bottle you might have sitting next to you. I’m also starting with the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program this fall.

Speaking of engineering, let’s go back to my first paragraph.

If you thought that could be adapted to be a description of the stereotypical MIT engineer, this is wrong. This is a myth. I will spend the next year or two while I have this blog trying to prove this to you.

Contrary to popular belief, MIT students (especially those in engineering) are not all workaholic shut-ins that live off of pizza and only see the sunlight when they go to take their exams 2-4 times a term. We have lives, we have social skills, and are generally pretty cool people. If you want to see engineering in action, just take a look at the East Campus rollercoasters, or even how the various performance groups design the sets for their shows!

Engineering, much like the people in it, comes in many different forms, but they all share a common ground. I seem to be one of the few people in GEL that’s majoring in a department that tends to get lumped together with the life sciences, but that doesn’t mean I don’t expect the experience to be valuable for me. The skills we will learn as part of the GEL program will be applicable anywhere in one way or another, and I’m excited to hit the ground running to get started!

So sit back, relax, and watch as I take chances, make mistakes, and get messy while trying to learn what’s up with GEL, (bio)engineering, and being an upperclassman at this good old institute.
 

I just came back to my dorm room from all the graduation hooplah. I have a diploma. I have about 100 pictures. I have a sunburn. It's a strange feeling (being graduated, not being sunburned. I'm plenty used to that by now.)

On MIT’s list of 101 things to do before graduation for the class of 2012, there has always been one elusive item that confused me:

#5: Understand the true meaning of IHTFP.

The five letters of IHTFP, which can mean a variety of things to a variety of people, have been passed down through MIT generations as a sort of rite of passage. To students, sometimes it’s “I Have Truly Found Paradise.” Sometimes, it’s “I Hate This F-ing Place.” As my last semester began, I started to wonder if I would know when I really knew the meaning of this saying. Thinking back on the past four years, I can finally say I do.

I can also cross off #2 (Pull an all-nighter--for fun). I actually had more all-nighters for fun than for schoolwork in the past four years. In chronological order, they were:

1) to finish my first engineering project
2) to make this flag with Martha ’12 for the Cross Country and Track teams

3) after an 8:00PM track race that went well and I was so hyped up on happiness, adrenaline, and post-race chocolate that I didn’t snap out of it until I found myself sorting laundry at 4 in the morning in the basement of my dorm, Baker House.
4) while working a shift at Baker desk and I got myself into a Glee, Modern Family, Community, and New Girl epic marathon.

But I think the more powerful things I’ve gotten away from my four laps around this track called the Institute were the unexpected lessons.The GEL program has a portfolio presentation requirement for its Two-Year Program students. This is an opportunity for us to tell the staff what we have learned from GEL and how our leadership style has changed over the years. I joined GEL for the opportunity to develop leadership skills in a technical setting, but it amazes me to see how the lessons have reached into non-technical fields, too. I know how to write a specification for a project. I know how to follow one.  I know what to do if I have an idea for an improvement to the project. I know how to negotiate. I know the importance and value of having a mentor. I couldn't say any of this two years ago, so even though I have more to learn, I feel like an entirely different person than the Maggie from 2008.

When I came to MIT, I lived in a quad and kind of had the reputation as “the quiet one.” I would generally sit at my desk and not bother anyone while doing homework. One day, our neighbor Lizz came in to offer her daily dose of humor.

“What do you call cheese that isn’t yours?”

Something in my mind broke at that second. This was my go-to joke in high school, and floods of memories flashed before my eyes as I spun around in my chair and exclaimed, “NA-CHO CHEESE” with the sass of a 30-year-old hair salon stylist.

Lizz and I have been best friends ever since. And neither of us has any sort of "quiet" reputation.
 

When I came to MIT, I wanted to be a biology researcher. My life goal was to be published in big science journals, so I worked in three different labs during my undergraduate years. One of those experiences was a year-long UROP working with polymers as a cell environment. At the end of the project, I asked my supervisor if I could write an article for the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal, and she said yes! So, within a few months, I got my first research "publication." It was small, but it was a start.

And that was when I realized that I could actually get things done with my writing. Ideas would hit me at night and I jumped out of bed to start typing. In fact, I started my first draft of this entry at 1:20AM because I was too afraid the narrative would escape me in the morning.

One of my favorite memories of MIT will be writing this article, which I had been working on for two months as I talked with MIT's former President, Vice President and Secretary of the Corporation, and Chancellor along with countless faculty, staff, students, and alumni. People came up to me to tell me they read the article with tears in their eyes.

None of my research had ever moved someone liked that before. I’ve never turned in a pset and heard a grader say, “wow, that really made me change the way I think about things.” But I’ve found something that can have that effect, and I don’t want to let it go.

And before anyone scoffs to say why I love writing at a tech school, this past semester I wrote grant proposals for a writing project on biomedical engineering in Vietnam this summer, and it was that writing that convinced a very generous individual to offer guidance through my planning stages. I wouldn't have the vision for this project if it wasn't for effective writing.

When I came to MIT, I generally stuck to the safe road. This summer, thanks to MISTI I’m going to a country I’ve never been to before to work in an industry I have little experience in and speak a language I’ve only been studying since January. It’s terrifying, yes, but I know that by Thanksgiving I will know about all those things and much more.

When I came to MIT, I knew very few people. I walked down the hallway of Baker House, dropped my stuff off in my room, and started knocking on doors to meet people. I met a sophomore who was still my friend even as she graduated last year. Now, I feel like a member of a larger community.

As the last touch of my final entry, I wanted to leave some closing thoughts for the youngn’s out there. I realize it comes after Elizabeth’s amazing doodles of inspiration, and can't touch the epicness of this and this, but consider this your extra helping of MIT advice:

These are just some of the seniors of Baker House! Josh, Juan, Alisha, Tim the Beaver, Mary, Yun, me, and Allison celebrated the end of 4 great years.

And, above all else:

 

Oddly enough, I am really going to miss doing workouts on the outdoor track in October, when the sunset behind Simmons is actually brilliant.

And you know what? I’m even going to miss that one bird outside my dorm room window whose chirping has teased me during many late nights starting around 2:30. I only say that because I could hear it when I started drafting this entry. It’s yet another memory I’ll take with me from MIT.

 

There has already been some coverage of the event through The Tech, the MIT News Office and the Alumni Association, but as one of the handful of inaugural TIMtalks speakers, I got a unique perspective on how this initiative developed and the people who helped make it happen. I included videos of the talks in this entry, and I highly encourage you to watch as many as you can because they show what MIT students are all about. Maybe all you need is a 10-15 minute story to get you motivated for the summer!

According to Anjali ‘12, the Director and Founder of TIMtalks, “TIMtalks was created as a forum to practice and learn to communicate as the change agents that we all will be, but also to discuss failures and challenges along the way as a community-building exercise to build a culture of accepting failure.”

As Anjali enthusiastically explained over e-mail, “I sent emails to the Chancellor and a lot of deans, directors, and MIT Corporation people, and within three hours of sending the email, we had raked in ~$9000 in funding. It was one of the most inspiring days of my MIT career, to see the entire community come together so quickly to support something that they really believed had potential to positively impact our students. That was one of those ‘ah-hah!!!’ moments for me at MIT that made me realize why I loved this place so much.”

Next, she assembled her TIMteam: Omar ’12 and Samvaran ’12: “I got them on board in early April, and it was wonderful. I remember one night when the three of us were working on getting the website and applications up. We literally sat in the student center by Dunkin Donuts from 4 pm to 4 am and just pushed out so much work to get the website ready for the launch. We bonded over so many things, and we learned so much from each other!”

Omar said he was excited to be involved in such an event: "I was particularly concerned with the lack of forums for undergrads to come together to share interesting ideas or amazing things they had struggled to accomplish. It was something that had bothered me for some time and when I heard Anjali was starting such a program, I knew I wanted to be part of it."

Sometime during the spring semester, Anjali and I sat near each other during a dinner at a nearby cafe. I overheard her explaining the idea she had for TIMtalks, and was instantly hooked.

Public speaking is a big passion of mine, and I could tell this was going to be an innovative, inspiring event for the MIT community. So, as soon as the website went live, I submitted my application, including a sound recording of me giving an excerpt from my talk, which I titled “comMITment.”

Within a few weeks, the speakers were chosen: Samvaran would emcee, Anjali and Omar would give two of the speeches, and Kanjun, Noam, and I would be the speakers at the inaugural TIMtalks on May 18!

Flashing forward to two days before the event, I sat in the office of Kim Benard of MIT’s Global Education and Career Development Office to have her read the first draft of my speech. I liked where the talk was going, but I didn’t know what my overall message was. It just seemed like a lot of random thoughts strung together on a piece of paper.

Kim identified a few themes that stood out—including the support web on MIT’s campus—and gave me the idea of illustrating the support found at MIT during my talk. Okay, we were getting somewhere.

This was a crazy week for all of us, and TIMtalks were smack in the middle of it all on Wednesday evening. With the semester winding down, we had other projects (for example, Noam had two 40-page papers that week, Omar had another speech to memorize the night before), so it was honestly no surprise that none of us had our speeches finished at our dress rehearsal Monday night.

Instead, we just talked about our ideas for our talks, and it was amazing to hear the diversity of perspectives. Leaving that meeting, I was apprehensive of my yet-to-be-written speech, but I knew TIM talks was going to be an incredible event.

I stayed up late into the night finishing my speech, and printed it. All Tuesday I kept that copy in my pocket and pulled it out whenever I had downtime between classes. All five of us had a little over 24 hours to memorize our speeches that were supposed to inspire the MIT community and beyond. That night, I practiced anywhere that was quiet and could hold an audience: the MIT chapel, the Stata center, a random classroom. Two, three, four recitations at each location later, I was starting to get it, which was good because it was already past 1:00 am and I was dragging from a week’s worth of sleep deprivation, which is not exactly what my memory needed.

Before the event began, Anjali pulled us into a little huddle, where she reassured us that it was going to be a great event and that she was already so amazed with how the event planning had come together. The five of us went into TIMtalks having never practiced our speeches together as a group, so I had no idea what to expect.

comMITment

Omar had a similar experience while practicing. "Early on, I knew what idea I wanted to present to the MIT community but as the event approached and I actually had to write out a speech, I quickly realized how hard it would be to convey my story in 12 minutes. ...My speech changed literally five times before the day of the event, meaning I had more or less a few hours the night before to memorize it. In addition to TIMtalks the next day, I had two other presentations, one of which was a 15 minute talk that I also had to memorize. Needless to say, the night before was frantic and stressful as I paced back and forth through my apartment memorizing my two speeches. ...The next day, I hardly paid attention to my classes as I was going over my speeches in my head. Although many times, my two speeches blended together by accident as I practiced, I luckily pulled off my speech at TIMtalks without any problems."

Drugging the Undruggable: The Road Not Taken

Kanjun, too, practiced as much as she could before the event. “On the day of the talk, I was in lab, and really needed to practice. So to do dry runs, I locked myself in the lab’s only empty room, which happened to be the room with the laser cutter, 3-D printer, and a variety of other machining tools. Talk about an interesting audience,” Kanjun said.

Expanding the Culture of Computing

Anjali had pulled several all-nighters the week before the big day, so her energy was low by the time Wednesday came around. She finished her speech at 3:30 AM on Wednesday, and went to see Kim Benard later that day.

At that meeting, Anjlai said she had a mini-break down: “I wasn't sure how everything was going to happen. [Kim] was perfect: she sympathized with me for about five minutes and told me everything would be okay and that the event was going to go great, but made me realize that I actually needed to have a talk for the event to start off well! She grabbed my printout from me and forced me to give my talk by memory. So I did, and I stumbled a lot and begged to see the sheet, but she wouldn't let me. So I did it a few times until the fourth time when my talk actually started sounding like a talk!

“That was exactly what I needed: somebody to help me focus on my talk rather than the event in general. During my next few class periods, I just kept going over the main topics and punch lines until I felt more comfortable.”

It was obvious to see the emotion in Anjali’s email to me about the hours before TIMtalks: “When I walked to Kirsch, it was NOTHING like what I had expected. I had been working with Larry Gallagher and MIT AMPS for the weeks preceding the event, but I hadn't envisioned the event looking so. freaking. SPECTACULAR!...That got the energy flowing, I think in everybody! We chatted with Chancellor Grimson before the event, and the whole force of people who came together to make that day possible was just wonderful!”

Conquering the Imposter Syndrome: The Inspiration for TIMtalks

According to Noam, “It was an interesting experience for me, because to be honest I don't know that I've ever gotten so much positive feedback at one time. [It was a] huge confidence booster, and speaking at the event itself was so exhilarating! I loved every second of it. One of my friends even e-mailed me ‘Noam, you're going to be President.’... That was so incredible to hear.”

Do Now

In fact, each of us feels like a mini-celebrity on campus. Noam loved the feedback from the event: “I received a humongous amount of e-mails, half of Israel found out after my mom e-mailed the extended family (and posted it on Facebook for all her Israeli home girls to see), and I had someone stop me on the street and ask me if I was Noam Angrist, from TIMtalks: ‘Your talk was awesome. Just wanted to let you know and introduce myself.’ That was so cool.”

Kanjun, too, found it to be a memorable experience: “I wanted to participate because I think there are important things that the general MIT community experiences but never thinks about, and it's about time somebody talked about these issues in a more public way.

“Post-TIMTalks, I've gotten emails from a bunch of people asking everything from how to engage young girls in their field to how to deal with MIT culture,” she said.

This has been an incredible journey for those of us involved in TIMtalks, and I am so excited to see where this event goes from here. Anjali’s already planning for next year’s TIMtalks, which I’m sure will be just as inspiring and insightful as the first. In case you're interested, the entire collection of TIMtalks videos are available here.

When some teammates from my junior year’s Engineering Leadership Lab (ELL) wanted to have a reunion dinner a few months ago, Bertucci’s was the obvious choice of venue.

It was fun catching up, especially since our table comprised of a graduated course 2A (a flexible degree in mechanical engineering) startup cofounder, a course 6 (electrical engineering and computer science) senior, and me, a course 10B (chemical-biological engineering) senior. We're all students in GEL program, and I love the opportunity to meet students from a variety of engineering disciplines because so many of my classes are in the coure 10 curriculum. But we didn't talk about psets and exams. We talked about career ambitions and networking and other things that I as a graduating student am particularly interested in.

I learned a LOT about startups that night. In his senior year, Kevin cofounded a company called Ministry of Supply with a fellow GEL student, Gihan. They sell business shirts made out of performance material, so subway trips or bike rides to work won’t spoil a fresh, clean shirt. According to Kevin, startups are startlingly similar to an ELL.

“You need to talk to people, you need to get something, you’re under time pressure, you’re working with teammates,” he explained. He didn’t realize the impact from the GEL program until he had the opportunity to apply the lessons to his company, which has had a lot of fantastic opportunities in the past year. Ministry of Supply got to present on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

According to Andrew, “One thing GEL taught me that I talked about was the importance of understanding how your users think. I think the relevant quote from [one of the GEL classes, Engineering Innovation & Design] is ‘The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.’” He took a class this semester on international supply chain management since he knew that Panjiva's users are supply chain and sourcing managers.

In less than one year with the company, Kevin is amazed with how much he’s learned in such a short amount of time. Some examples include the importance of visioning and interpersonal skills in a work environment. Ministry of Supply came up with a core mission. They use superhero names in emails. They constantly use the phrase “use all parts of the buffalo” to remind themselves to avoid waste and encourage resourcefulness. They watch Ocean’s Eleven and Top Gun to have fun.

Andrew, who works for a Cambridge-based startup called Panjiva, said his company also made a list of commitments (“we are constantly learning – and, therefore, constantly growing,” “we give and receive constructive feedback for example” are a couple of examples) and identified their stakeholders order to focus their efforts from the get-go. It apparently makes things a lot easier when a company has direction and a clear purpose.

Kevin, who was accepted early to Stanford Business School as a senior before starting the company, recommends setting milestones for 1, 3, and even 5 years out from a company start date. At MIT’s spring career fair at the beginning of the semester, their booth was right next to the UnderArmour booth. This was a great motivation for Ministry of Supply, since UnderArmour was also a performance-wear startup just over a decade ago. This year, the company is projected to have over $110 million in revenue.

What’s Ministry of Supply’s goal for 2012? Kevin says they’d love to be on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report.
Meanwhile, Andrew has learned a lot from being on the “other side” of hiring at the MIT career fairs.

Both of them agreed with the sentiment of “we hire people, not years.” If a sophomore walks up to them at a career fair, and seems like a promising candidate, they don’t care if that’s the youngest applicant they have.
“People often say that the best indicator for future performance is past performance,” Kevin said. He recommends putting specific details on a resume so that interviewers have something to talk about that highlights one’s strengths as an applicant.

The final topic we hit on was networking. I thought it was great to hear their experiences as the career fairs, but I find that sometimes it’s tough for course 10 students to find engineering positions from the giant chemical engineering companies that show up at MIT. More often than not, companies don’t take my resume and instead recommend that I submit it online. But that’s so impersonal! All that accomplishes is putting my name in a database far, far away.

Kevin actually got an internship from one of these “online resume drop” companies in his freshman year, and got an offer. When it came to his specific group assignment, he called the guy he babysat for, who was a top official within the company and paired Keven with an “amazing” supervisor. Sometimes getting your foot in the door like that takes a little bit of creativity and a whole lot of luck.

Honestly, though, Kevin loves it when undergraduates reach out to him. “I was told as an undergrad that when alums hear from current students asking for help, the undergraduates are like a puppy,” he said. Basically, there’s no downside to reaching out to an MIT alum. Even if he or she never responds, you’re not in any worse position than you were in before.

As we left the restaurant, bags of dinner rolls in hand, I felt like I had just had a conversation with my own personal mentors. It’s not every day that I get to spend a solid hour just talking about initiative, visioning, and networking for the heck of it, and these are really the kinds of lessons that you can’t simply learn in a classroom.

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 of think of myself as the Teaching Assistant (“TA,” in MIT-ese) for the 1:00-3:00 section. I meet with the staff and fellow GEL 2 student officers, and make sure my section is ready for the upcoming ELL.

One other little detail about becoming a section leader was that I was responsible for helping to plan the Student-Run ELL.

I’ve mentioned these lessons before. Once a semester, the GEL staff let the GEL 2 students take the reins and design a brand-new ELL. It’s fun because we get to think outside of the box and try things we haven’t done in ELLs before.

This semester was no exception. About three weeks out, the GEL 2 students started brainstorming the kinds of things we’d like to see happen in “our” ELL: bigger groups, greater time pressure, new leadership; this time, we were breaking all the rules.

Here’s what we came up with (keep in mind that I’m condensing about 2-3 weeks of work, meetings, and emails into a tight abstract).

At the beginning of the ELL, we asked for a volunteer. We didn’t give any background information or any hints about what the volunteer would do. We just asked for a volunteer. We then took the brave soul outside the classroom for a “debrief” while the usual class announcements were made inside.

The volunteer learned that he or she was to role-play as the Director of FEMA in an earthquake emergency simulation. In less than 10 minutes, the Director was told to organize his or her classmates into a shelter team, an evacuation team, and a Public Relations team. The Director was to achieve certain tasks while minimizing the number of lives lost in the catastrophe. Every five minutes, there would be 1.2 million deaths in the simulation.

The volunteer then returned to the classroom, and the clock started ticking.

The shelter team was in charge of designing a rescue shelter under budget. They could choose the sturdiest structures possible, but those cost more money and thus fewer people would be saved. Meanwhile, the evacuation team had to come up with the safest means of transporting the simulated earthquake “survivors”. The FEMA Director had a budget of $250 million, which had to be split between the shelter and evacuation team, so there would need to be some negotiation to ensure both teams got enough money to do what they needed to do.

Meanwhile, the Public Relations team had to prepare short presentations for the President of the United States and the Director of UNICEF to keep them informed of the situation and the plan. If they did a good job, they could earn more funding from the government. If not, well, nothing happened.

It sounds pretty simple, right?

Well, designing this lab was a marathon. We wanted to make it as complex as possible for the GEL’s without making it too difficult for us to monitor what was going on during the simulation. We wanted to test a number of leadership capabilities in this simulation, and if the activity got in the way of the underlying lesson, then our planning efforts (sometimes lasting past 2am in the week leading up to the lab) would have been fruitless. To be honest, there were several times where we wondered if we had bitten off more than we could chew.

So, just like last semester, we did a “dress rehearsal” at our weekly GEL 2 staff meeting to identify any kinks in the design. With 48 hours before the lab, it was all coming together.

At 1:00 on Friday, it was my turn to lead the simulation. Under the direction of FEMA Director Marisa '13, the ELL seemed to be going as planned, but it took a little longer than expected for the budget to be divided between the shelter and evacuation teams.

Halfway through the exercise, I stopped the clock and gave the section time to reflect on the activity so far. This is something we’ve never done before in an ELL, but it seemed to be a valuable pause in the action. I know I’m sometimes less likely to point out flaws in a system while there’s work to be done; this way, the break forced the teams to think about how they were doing things as opposed to what they were actually doing.

We identified a few miscommunications between teams and revisited how each team was using the leadership capabilities of the day just to drive the point home. The next 30 minutes went pretty smoothly, and from talking with teams afterwards, they identified strengths and weaknesses in their section as a whole and in Marisa’s leadership style.

For me, though, the best part was all the feedback I got after the ELL. All the little curveballs made this ELL stressful, but interesting, according to a couple of my GEL friends. Plus, I was finally getting more comfortable with speaking up and sharing ideas!

There are few things at MIT that make me happier than a week of sleep deprivation with great results. There may even be a chance that this ELL is incorporated into the regular curriculum of future ELLs; if any of the future GEL 2’s leading that ELL happen to see this, I can only hope they have as much fun with it as I did!

FYI, more pictures are available on the GEL facebook!
 

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 down the other speech-makers from the top 3, so, without further ado, here are the videos for Anisha (3rd place overall) and Bruna's (2nd place overall, 1st place audience choice) speeches:

Photos and videos courtesy of Tony Eng!

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? Proving Them Wrong. Contestants had 4-5 minutes to engage a panel of judges (representing all 5 academic schools at MIT) and a lecture hall full of eager audeince members. The moment I heard about the competition, I registered and started brainstorming speeches. As a senior, I wanted my last IAP to be truly memorable, and this was the perfect project for me to pass time between Track practice and French class.

I must have gone through at least three speeches (Barbara Streisand lyrics—too optimistic; “The Fool’s Prayer” by Edward R. Sill—too short; an original piece—too much writer's block) before settling on my final topic. I asked myself if there is one person I could talk about until the end of time, and my answer was Julia Child.

Julia Child was a cook, not a chef. She grew up in Pasadena, CA, went to Smith College in Massachusetts, and worked for the US government, travelling the world from assignment to assignment with her husband, Paul. They finally settled in Paris, where Julia began to take lessons at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The rest, including multiple cookbooks and TV programs, is history.

I grabbed an excerpt from her autobiography, “My Life in France,” which is one of my favorite books, and added a conclusion to tie things together nicely with the theme. Speech = Done!

On the day of the qualifying round, it was a crystal clear 50 degree (Fahrenheit, of course, for the international readers) February day in Boston. I got on my bike and just explored Cambridge, killing time until the event began.

Oh man. Wait a minute.

This was the perfect time to go to 103 Irving Street. As in, Julia Child’s house. I’ve been meaning to do this all of IAP; what better time to do so than before I jumped head-first into the speech contest?!

A few u-turns and twists and cobblestone sidewalks later, I stood in front of her house. Julia Child passed away in 2004, ten years after her husband, so the house is now occupied by someone else. But it was shockingly simple. No sign. No marker. You’d never know that this was the house where my idol lived at the end of her career. I soaked in the weather, the sight of this house, the silence of the neighborhood, and then rode back to MIT.

Tony hosted “office hours” to help the participants fine-tune their speech, but I was expecting to just use it as practice for talking in front of a crowd. To my surprise, I received a fair amount of feedback on the basic content of my speech. The people in the classroom agreed that my dynamics were good, but I seemed to be “acting” the speech. They recommended that I make it more of a personal story rather than a monologue.

So, with just five hours until the qualifying round, I rewrote my speech. It was still about Julia and contained a few excerpts from her autobiography, but it was told from my perspective. I just started writing why I loved her story and the words came naturally.

The qualifying round was a blur, and within an hour I got an email congratulating me on making it to the final round with 14 other contestants. YES!

When I woke up on Thursday, my mind snapped to thoughts of the speech competition. So nervous! So excited! I spent some time in the pool, and of course I was thinking about my speech the entire time. I decided I wanted a little more humor in the speech, and thought how perfect it would be if I threw in a “Bon Appétit” and “Never Apologize” Julia Child impression. I also added in a part about Julia Child’s cat. That must have been the luckiest cat in the world to live with Julia Child in her early cooking years!

When I walked into the 6-120 lecture hall, about half an hour before the start of the competition, the reality hit me: This is happening. People are going to be in those seats, and I’m going to be standing right there. It was a mix of terror and exhilaration. I rehearsed my speech, and then sat and watched as other participants trickled in one by one. This was when I realized for the first time just how many participants were in this competition.

About halfway through the program, my name was called and I stepped up. My heart was racing. I stood, stole a glance at my track friends sitting in the top left corner of the room, looked at the book in my hand, and then began the most intense four minutes of my last IAP at MIT.

Video courtesy of Tony Eng.

I sat down, confident I'd put forth my absolute best effort. My final product was much better than any of my rehearsals from the past few days, and I couldn’t think of one thing I would have changed. I sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed the rest of the speeches. Contestants interpreted the theme in a variety of ways. Some recited poetry, some considered the meaning of the phrase "proving them wrong," some told personal stories of their athletics, their family, their history.

Once the speeches were done, we gathered in the lobby outside the lecture hall to enjoy cupcakes from one of my favorite establishments in the Boston area, Flour Bakery. Earlier in the day I joked with friends that even if I didn’t win, I was getting a Flour cupcake, so I was a winner anyway! It was wonderful to talk with the other participants, learn about their backgrounds and how they chose their speeches, and describe the experience to audience members.

After cupcakes, we filed back into our seats. The results for audience choice were up first. Each participant’s bucket was weighed to determine who got the most votes (in the form of poker chips), and Tony wrote the weights on the board, one by one. We saw numbers in the 80’s, 90’s, and then someone got a 137! Back to 90’s, another 80-something, and then—151. Woah. The number was on top of my bin. I was absolutely floored. Another one in the 130’s, another from the 90’s, and then one in the 180’s. This number stood atop the jar for a contestant named Bruna, who told the inspiring story of how a group of MIT students came together to support their friend who was paralyzed in her senior year. Still, with a second place in audience choice, I began to realize I had a real shot at the overall top three. The room settled and Tony read the results.

“Third Place—Anisha.” She stepped down to collect her envelope.
“Second Place — Bruna.” Okay, now my mind is racing.
“First Place—“
Half of me thought, “I have a real shot at this thing!” while the other half wondered, “But it could really be anyone.” Weeks of preparation all came down to--
“Maggie Lloyd.”

The room erupted into more cheers. For a split second, my mind broke. My screen went black, the apple icon came up, and the classic restart tone played in my mind. I stood at the front of the room and tried to comprehend what had just happened. Just like I soaked up the Julia-ness from 103 Irving Street, I wanted this moment to last forever.

As the hubbub subsided and people headed out of the room, I thanked all the judges, no longer sitting with their clipboards and looking intimidating. I thanked Tony, who channeled Ssuperman by putting this event on by himself.

Of course, as soon as I left the room I called my mom, who was at work.

“Hi Maggie, How are you?”
“...I won!” I whispered as I glided down the Infinite Corridor. General excitement and hooplah ensued.

A few minutes later, I was on the phone with my dad when I stepped into the track team locker room, where I just kind of erupted with a “GUYS I WON!” and started jumping up and down. The room was so loud that I had to tell my dad I’d call him back.

After practice, I found this on our white board

Followed by my personal favorite,

A few days later, I can say the whole event has had time to sink in. Not only did I have a blast preparing for the competition, but I also learned that MIT really can talk! The theme of "Proving Them Wrong" was so perfect to show that MIT students can be just as passionate about public speaking as they are about staying up late to tackle that last pset problem or coming into lab at the end of a long day to finish an experiment. To those who say engineers only speak in numbers, I say we just proved you wrong.

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 such a difference. I talked to a couple of the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) staff about this, and they said some interesting things in defense of humor.

GEL program Co-Director, MIT alum, and course VI professor Joel Schindall reflected, “Leaders who can joke around or take a joke when appropriate are certainly easier to work with.” He described the marketing manager, Gary, of the first company he worked for, as someone who frequently joked around with the engineers.

“[The engineers] liked it, and when Gary had technical questions from a customer, they would always find time to get him an answer even if they were busy with something else. In addition, Gary would always treat them to coffee when they met at the coffee machine. Coffee was only a quarter in those days, and Gary would say ‘where else can you "buy" people's cooperation for only a quarter?’” Schindall recalled.

GEL Executive Director Leo McGonagle said he feels “very strongly that a good sense of humor is important.”

And it’s not just engineering that can benefit: “I would often also emphasize this with my ROTC students as well (the military is a deadly serious profession, but a good sense of humor is still important).” A healthy sense of humor, he added, “helps keep us humble and not take ourselves too seriously, or to feel too self-important. It also shows that, while work is important, we're human, and we need to be able to have fun and enjoy what we're doing—when that’s appropriate.”

In my experience, humor has single-handedly gotten me through the past three-and-a-half years of drinking from the MIT firehose.

During my UROP last year, my supervisor and I were looking for ways to suspend some silicon slides in a round-bottom flask. If we just let them sink to the bottom of our reaction solution, essentially only one side would be exposed to the solution, so our product yield was half of its potential.

It seemed like we tried everything to get the reaction to happen on both sides of the slides: We tied them to the top of the flask, we used an Eppendorf tube as a flotation device, we tried to use wire to hold it in place. Each time I came into lab, my supervisor and I joked that it was time for “arts and crafts.”

With each disappointment, we would start thinking farther and farther outside of the box for the next idea. Laughing made it much more relaxed and interesting for me. Trust me, when you’re drilling miniature holes into a plastic tube and using it for something completely separate from its intended use, it becomes more of a competition (“That idea was crazy! How can we top that?”) than a chore.

I particularly enjoyed a past lecture when a professor used this image to describe how things in engineering are never as simple as they seem:

This is apparently the logo for an indie rock band in England. Oh, if only it was this easy to fly. I'll admit, I googled "get cape wear cap fly" to find this image.

At MIT, you can either be defeated by a challenge, or laugh it off with your friends as you work into the early morning. Let’s be honest, when you get an email, as I recently did, for a certain class that begins with, “Obviously, the homework set is way much more complicated than expected” and ends, “And again, no stress. You’ll be fine,” you’re going to need a good sense of humor to push through the upcoming challenge. And maybe a large coffee.

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 Thanksgiving, and knew that we wanted something interactive and competitive, but still relevant to engineering leadership. After much discussion, we settled on a negotiation activity, in which each team had to build “satellites” out of Legos (apparently we really like Legos—who doesn't?!).

The catch was that each team didn’t have enough Legos to make satellites on its own. Some teams had a lot of brown pieces, some teams had a little bit of everything, some teams needed only black pieces. Each Lego had a point value assigned to it, and a completed satellite was worth more than the sum of its parts. The teams’ goal was to maximize points through negotiations with other teams.

At our GEL 2 team meeting a few nights before the ELL, we did some “alpha testing” to make sure that our ELL idea was even feasible.

The biggest problem? We finished the entire activity in less than 15 minutes. ELLs are two hours long, so we obviously needed to throw in some curveballs to make the activity more complex. We redistributed Legos to ensure that every team had to make at least one negotiation before completing a satellite and separated “planning” time and “negotiating” time into two separate periods per round (four rounds total). Although each team could talk to any other team, it could make a deal with only two predetermined teams (team 2 could only trade with teams 1 and 3, for example).

On Friday, as the teams sat with their GEL 2 Team Leader (and the GEL faculty looked on), we explained the learning objectives and the activity began, with Bruce, Director of GEL Communications and Outreach, and I snapping as many pictures as we could.

In the first round, there was silence. Very little negotiating took place because teams were still trying to develop a strategy.

After the first two satellites were made in the second round, discussions started to get more energetic. Interestingly, two teams decided to share their resources and split the satellite points 50/50, while my team got the pieces they needed to turn in the other one.

The teams that hadn’t yet made a satellite scrambled to get the pieces they needed. In round 3 things got intense. The moment the planning phase ended and the negotiation phase began, teams jumped out of their chairs to get conversations going. Each team obviously knew what it wanted and was racing against the clock—and other teams—to finalize deals.

Negotiations were still going strong as time ran out at the end of the fourth round. It seemed that team 5 won, but a last minute merger between teams 3 and 4 gave all of team 4’s points to team 3 in exchange for splitting the prize. It was a solution the GEL 2’s weren’t expecting, but it was a fairly negotiated agreement so it was approved and the teams got to shared a giant bag of candy.

The important thing about ELLs is that, even when they get competitive, we’re more interested in the “so what?,” not the “what?” It didn’t really matter about Legos, candy, or winning; what mattered were the lessons GELs learned during their planning and negotiation, because those are what we'll need in the future.

After leading for two rounds, my team ended up in third, but after our quick debrief, they realized that they had learned a lot about the art of negotiation. They were happy with how they delegated roles at the very beginning of the exercise so they knew who was in charge of negotiations and who was in charge of the Lego “inventory.” Then, they defined what exactly they wanted and what they were willing to give up—and which teams they thought they could negotiate with effectively.

As a GEL 2, it was great to see how much the GELs enjoyed the activity. Our weeks of hard work and planning paid off, and the GEL staff have already said they want to keep this activity for next year. If any 2012 GEL students are reading this now, I recommend one thing: DON'T FOCUS ON THE CANDY.

Looking for more photos? There are plenty on the GEL flickr and facebook pages!
 

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 all-nighters, the windowless basement computer lab, the return of 10.301 (fluid mechanics), 10.302 (heat and mass transfer), 10.37 (chemical kinetics and reactor design), and 10.213 (chemical engineering thermodynamics) all at once.” Let’s just say I was a little intimidated going into this class, especially since the professor wrote “Yes, it’s ICE” on the top of the board on the first day of class. Eight weeks later, my group (Lucy ’12, Emily ’12, Yingxia ’12, and I) submitted our design, which looks like a cross between a subway map and a complicated football maneuver.

So, how did it go? I have to admit, this was the first time that I actually felt like an engineer. Our objective was to design a process that would produce a certain amount of ethyl acetate at a given purity per year. Ethyl acetate is a very common solvent, which those of you who have worked in labs or even used perfume or nail polish remover can appreciate.

We used the program Aspen Plus to create and tinker with our design. The reagents, acetic acid and ethanol, are fed into a reactive distillation column that converts the feeds to ethyl acetate and water while purifying the outlet streams. Our product comes out the top of the column, but is nowhere near the desired purity, so we need to remove all the unwanted stuff in that stream. That’s accomplished by a decanter, which separates the aqueous and organic liquid phases in this stream, (if you're wondering how two liquids can separate, think of water and oil) and a second column, only this one is nonreactive. Along the way, the pressure is manipulated by valves and pumps of various sizes.

This process resulted in a lot of nights of Maggie eating dinner in the basement of ChemE’s building 66, lovingly referred to as “the bunker” or “the dungeon,” as she worked on ICE. Each weekly pset built upon the one before it, so there was pressure to get a working solution every time. I honestly wish that I had kept track of how many hours I spent in that room in the past couple of months, but believe me when I say that 2 a.m. walks back to Baker House became my norm this semester.

So, the first big part of ICE (yes, there's another 8-week session in the spring) is complete, which certainly justifies a mental break, and with perfect timing, too. My flight is about to leave for Sacramento where family and turkey await; I gave myself a strict no-homework policy for the next few days, so this will probably be my chance to catch up on sleep and blogging, but not necessarily in that order (I’m woefully behind schedule on both activities). Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

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 only how my internship was meeting these requirements, but also what I honestly thought about my current internship.

First of all, I was impressed that my company had a project ready for me to start work on the second I stepped in the door. Looks like this summer I’m researching some recent developments in biotechnology and chemistry and will be analyzing that data to offer recommendations on behalf of my organization.

They also designated a mentor for every single intern to ease the transition into this new environment, which helped me during the past month when I was conducting tedious research on my company’s background information. There are co-workers here who have been studying this stuff for years, so I had a lot to catch up on in a short amount of time. This week, I met with my mentor to give a status report, and I expressed how overwhelmed I was with all the available information. With two months to go, I asked her how she would define the project being finished because at that point I felt far from any conclusions. We talked about what specific information I needed to start making links and drawing conclusions, and realized that there are a couple of key information gaps in our analysis. With these gaps identified, I had something to work towards.

In this meeting, I also asked her if there are any kinds of deliverables that I could produce. The last thing I wanted was to leave my internship without any concrete proof that I did something meaningful. I noticed how my company puts out presentations, short reports, long reports, and graphics on almost a daily basis, so there are more than enough opportunities for me to get my work in one of these. I argued that even something like an emailed copy of my results to the head of our group would challenge me to take a step back and take a look at the whole summer and apply it to the future projects within the company. She said this was a great idea, and we’ll be making plans in the next few weeks to get it done.

While I dove into my project with a new vision to guide me, my supervisor asked a fellow intern and I to update some production lists. It was a simple enough task that just required us to compare a master list of reports that had been published in the past few years with an online database, and fill in the gaps. The other intern and I had to come up with a plan of attack that would avoid work being lost if one of us saved a page while the other was working on it (think of wikis or google docs). Apparently this task was on our team’s to-do list for a while, but no one ever got around to it. What was a tedious activity for them turned out to be a pretty cool opportunity for us interns to learn about what our company had produced in the past decade.

One thing I noticed while working on this project was that there were other databases within the company that weren’t updated either. When I brought this up to my supervisor and asked if I could update them as well, he gave me the necessary editing access. A few days later, he called the other intern and I into his office and said “no good deed goes unpunished.” Were we being rewarded for pushing ctrl—C and ctrl—V over and over again? Sort of. Other teams within our organization caught wind of our database project, and wanted their sites updated, too. So, we got access to more sites and started sorting hundreds of document titles. Although our scale had dramatically increased, the other intern and I used our same technique from earlier to avoid saving over each other’s work. What seemed like a really simple 1-to-2-hour task before had become a longer-term project that would affect a lot of teams within the organization. Yes, we were essentially still copying and pasting our way through the database, but the complexity and scope of the project was entirely different and we still had our original intern assignments to work on, too. There never felt like there were enough hours in the day!

Next week, we’ll be meeting with an employee who’s going to use our database update efforts to compile sources used in those reports. In the past, my organization received three different pieces of information only to discover they were all from the same source, so our side project is helping this employee, and thus the whole company, avoid this sort of duplication in the future. I like this little side project because even though it started as an easy act of compiling titles, the supervisor listened to my recommendations to expand my efforts and was a helpful resource in getting the task done. Even a little thing like this will help the company after I leave in August because they can easily reference past reports without digging through master excel spreadsheets and compare sources from report to report to efficiently deliver more accurate reports. An it’s funny for me to see how this project has evolved. Our final step is when things get technical; last Friday, we were asked to compile some statistics about the specific sources used in these documents and report our findings to the administration before we leave. This means two things: all that training at the beginning of the summer to be an analyst is seriously paying off, and I better get my business suit out of the corner of my closet in preparation for the presentation of my college student career.

At first, I was shy about bringing up the potential to work on other sites at all because I didn’t want to tell my supervisor how to do his job. This is kind of characteristic of past internship experiences, where I just did what was expected of me. Making this an InternshipPlus means I have to challenge these thoughts and exceed those expectations. If this internship turns into a full-time career later down the road, I want them to remember me as someone with potential, not as the intern who was simply the intern and will always be the intern. It's a little weird to think about post-MIT life, but, hey, I only have 11 months left at MIT so I better get some plans on the table, and this internship has really helped me discover what kind of environment I look for in a career!

But the biggest change for me is this: I am not doing research.

Ever since I was a sophomore in high school, I walked around telling people I wanted to be a cancer researcher. It sounded so awesome! I imagined that I would try new experiments, test new compounds, and write exciting papers that would be published in exciting journals. There was only one problem. Saying I want to be a “cancer researcher” is like saying “I want to work as a scientist!” If I wanted to commit to a career in research, I needed a very specific plan. I had no plan, but that’s what summer internships are for, or at least that’s what I told myself. You get to try a career for a few months to test the waters. If you don’t like it, you have narrowed your options.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really enjoyed the experiences I’ve had in labs, but I started to realize that it’s not the career for me. Last fall was the big moment when I told myself to start looking for opportunities outside of the lab. It was terrifying. For almost five years of my life I had been set on this one path, and now I was forcing myself to chart a new course. Interestingly, I knew writing would have to be involved. I never thought that a few years of MIT would make me enjoy writing so much, but it has.

At the MIT Career Fair a few months later, I only had an hour to meet with company representatives because of my class schedule. This was like the Supermarket Sweep of Career Fairs. Out of hundreds of tables, I had time to meet with three companies.  I handed my resume out and discovered what a chemical engineer (“with a focus on Biology,” I said, since I’m course XB) could do for each organization. That night, one of the companies called me back and asked for an interview.

“Oh, um, wow! I mean, sure, when are the interviews?” I asked.

Turns out, they were the next day. I usually like to prepare a few days in advance of these kinds of things, not a few hours. But something was going right because they asked for a second interview, and then I flew out for a third in a company site visit, and before I knew it I got a nice, big envelope in the mail.

I’m still working in biochemistry, but now I’m writing about it. As an analyst, I’m researching new biochem and biotech developments and advising different groups based on that information. It’s a brand new environment for me—I’m sitting at a desk, not a lab bench, but it seems like my instinct to explore a new career was a good one because I have never felt time fly by as quickly as it does when I’m at work these days. Yes, it’s even worth the early wake-up time.

This experience also meets my InternshipPlus requirement as a two-year GEL student. The GEL program encourages its students to get the most out of their internships, so we are challenged to ask our supervisor for leadership opportunities. At first, this sounded simple enough to me, but once I arrived at my new job I started getting cold feet in terms of bringing up my InternshipPlus requirements. I felt very much like a rookie, and didn’t want to seem pushy in my first week of work.

So how did the conversation with my supervisor go? Well, not to leave you on a cliffhanger or anything, but I think the rest of this story should be saved for another entry. Check back soon!
 

There’s a list of “101 things to do before you graduate” that every MIT student receives in Orientation, and mine is a little more than halfway done. Considering the fact that I’m already ¾ of the way done with MIT in general, I knew I had to get cracking on this list.

The Prudential Center peeks over the Back Bay Fens, where Boston citizens can maintain their own gardens

Behind me is the bustle of Kenmore Square and Fenway Park, home to the Red Sox. In front of me is more of the Back Bay Fens, part of Boston's beautiful Emerald Necklace.

On another errand, I walked out of an office and saw Hanover Street, the "Broadway" of Boston's Italian North End neighborhood.

Off of Hanover, the streets are really narrow and there is brick everywhere. Say hello to the Boston Harbor, which is connected to the Charles River!

And if you go to the North End, you must go to Mike's Pastry

And if you go to Mike's Pastry, you must get a cannoli

And if you get a cannoli, you must find a nearby park to enjoy it in when there's perfect weather.

It was Memorial Day weekend, so the Boston Commons were celebrating with full force!

I had time to grab lunch at the Clover food truck...

...before heading off to the Haymarket farmer's market to get really cheap, really amazing produce. I got an entire box of bananas for a buck, and made something like three different banana breads that weekend.

Also on Memorial Day weekend, the Boston Museum of Fine Art opens its doors to the public for free (although MIT students can get in for free any day with a student ID). Looks like a lot of people are excited to see some art!

But where is everyone?

Oh that's right, the Chihuly exhibit is in town. These photos don't do the exhibit justice because my camera just couldn't handle the low lighting, but they give you an idea of the complexity and allure of the blown glass artwork.

As a Californian, "summer" means "beach trips," so a group of friends and I went to Singing Beach by Manchester-by-the-Sea (yes, that is actually the name of the town), which was easily accessible by the commuter rail, a train system that connects to "the T" subways. The sand made this crazy noise when you dragged your feet over it. It was singing (sort of)!

But it’s not like I spent all my free time going to museums, eating delicious cannolis, and jumping in the Atlantic Ocean. There was work to be done! I went to a meeting for the IAB, the Industry Advisory Board for the GEL Program and got to see Bernie Gordon, the program’s founder! The IAB gets together about quarterly to talk about how the program is doing and what its future may hold. The room is filled with MIT professors, industry engineers, and GEL staff, so to be in the presence of all this engineering power was a real treat! Student input is regarded highly by this board, and my fellow GELs and I were there to give feedback from a student perspective.

photos by Bruce Mendelsohn

Finally, the whole reason I got to stay on campus for so long after finals was the hooding ceremony. You’re all probably familiar with Commencement, where undergrad and graduate students alike receive their diplomas in Killian Court. The hooding ceremony, however, is when the doctorate students receive their hoods, the colorful garments that they wear over their gowns to identify their school and degree (red means PhD, or doctorate of philosophy; yellow means ScD, or doctorate of science).

My job in all of this was to help the MIT faculty put their hoods on, because it involves a lot of straightening and aligning and buttoning that can be awkward for someone in a flowing academic robe to keep track of. Imagine my nerves as I went up to various faculty members, who could scholarly crush me with a single thought, and asked if they needed help putting their hood over their robe. Of course, faculty are people, too, so they were pleasantly appreciative for the assistance.

Check out the MIT News Office's coverage here.

So, for all those who wonder “is there anything green in downtown Boston,” “do MIT students actually seek out fun things to do in the area,” or “what on earth is the hooding ceremony,” I hope I’ve cleared up some things for you. Happy summer y’all! I'll leave you with my favorite picture of the fortnight, which I snatched while crossing the Longfellow Bridge. This is my favorite bridge that spans the Charles. It may not have Smoots, but it has a better view and drops you off closer to the heart of downtown Boston.

Last April, a group of four sophomores, who are all incoming GEL students, won the OnStar Student Developer Challenge with their speech-recognition application, EatOn. This program helps drivers choose restaurants by offering descriptions, directions, ratings, and reservations. It can also let the user send a text message to invite friends or post to the user’s Twitter account!

The contest was hosted by OnStar, GM’s in-vehicle operator, which includes navigation, diagnostics, security, and emergency features, and was open to students at Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, University of Michigan, University of Texas and University of Toledo.

What’s the story behind their victory, you ask?

Sarah and Marie are two course X (chemical engineering) students on the Cross Country and Track teams who took Engineering Innovation & Design (EID), a class in the GEL program, together last fall. EID requires an individual and group project involving speech recognition, so that’s where Sarah and Marie learned a lot of the basics of writing prompts and designing this kind of system.

The first time they heard about the OnStar Student Developer Challenge was when EID instructor, Blade Kotelly, mentioned it in class. A few months passed and then Sarah met Drew, a course VI (electrical engineering and computer science) sophomore, during UPOP (mentioned previously) over IAP. When a GM campus representative emailed GELs about the contest, Drew contacted Isaac, a fellow course VI sophomore, and Drew and Sarah went to the information session.

In terms of group dynamics, these four melded together quickly and impressively. They said they experienced little trouble while working together, although it did take a lot of Saturday marathons of work since their schedules during the week were pretty hectic. Working on this project was “almost another class,” according to Isaac.

The work itself started with an intense brainstorming period, which generated more than 30 ideas. “We just made sticky notes,” said Marie, who added that the premise for the restaurant app was “just one of the things on our super long list of things” they thought everyone could use.

One issue they faced was the fact that there is no comprehensive list of restaurants they could simply copy, so they had to manually write in keywords to help the system recognize possible responses from users. In the end, they came up with 173 categories of food types (From reading this blog you all know I’m a foodie, so this number really makes me happy).

But that’s not all. They also had more than 20 pages of state tables, which list the prompts and directions (for example, “end call” or “go to another page”) for every point in the speech-recognition program.

To publicize their program, they named themselves “Team dreamON” and the system “EatOn” to be consistent with the OnStar brand. They also designed their own logo and website for the project.*

From my discussions with the group members, it was easy to see the mutual respect they had for each other. “These guys are amazing,” Marie said about Drew and Isaac’s coding skills. The group balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses, so while Marie and Sarah worked on the structure of the presentation using their experience from EID, Drew timed subtitles perfectly for the sample call, and Isaac, who “is apparently a pro at making powerpoints,” according to Marie, worked on the overall design of the slides. This Spring, Isaac and Drew took EID so they learned a lot of the important design elements along the way.

A few days before their project was due, the group showed Blade their system. He suggested a lot of changes, so the group pounded out work for two nights before finally turning it in.

As it turns out, the hard work paid off: The group was one of six finalists for the contest, which meant a free trip to California to present their system. When they finally practiced their presentation in front of Blade, his response was simply “—ing awesome!” This was their final green light before heading to the April 19-21 Where 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara.

In California, the group set up a podium in their hotel room so they could practice even more. That night, they had dinner with the VP of OnStar and the contest teams and judges. Since their minds were still on Eastern Daylight time, they got up at 5:00 the next morning, so they practiced again before heading to the conference to watch the keynote address.

Team dreamOn was first to present, which they treated as an advantage. The team agreed that watching all the other presentations was much more enjoyable without having to worry about their own. The other teams presented a variety of in-vehicle apps, including environmental and entertainment themes. A second group from MIT, also comprising of GEL students with EID experience, was also one of the finalists.

That night, the results were announced, and team dreamOn was the winner! The group went out to dinner to celebrate, and got on a flight back to Boston, arriving on campus at the crack of dawn the next morning.

The winners in team dreamOn: Marie Burkland, Drew Dennsion, Isaac Evans, and Sarah Sprague.

The sophomores have been surprised by the amount of publicity from their win. The way Sarah describes it, they expected to get back to campus and continue on with life without anyone really giving attention to the contest. CNET, BostInnovation, the Boston Herald, and the MIT News Office all published articles about these sophomores winning the grand prize of Apple gear. Marie even got a message from a family friend in Michigan saying that she saw the group’s photo on the front page of GM’s newsletter.

So what advice does this winning team have for you as you embark on future group projects? Here’s their list:

Marie: Make sure you have a really good idea for your project. It has to be an idea you really like.

Drew: Start early, and get a good group with opposite strengths so you can balance the workload.

Isaac: Go for depth, not breadth. That is, focus on a few key features that work great rather than offering a whole array of less robust features.

Sarah: Go the extra mile in your deliverables and presentations because you really want to make your project stand out since you put so much work into it. Additionally. design a really good logo for your project.

*The phone number to EatOn is listed on their website, but it’s no longer functional since the contest is over. The features are demonstrated in a couple of sample calls on their site, though, and I really encourage you to look over their highly detailed documentation. In a word, it’s awesome.

As I hinted at in my last entry, the GEL program had a hands-on hour-long activity of its own, called "Deliver!"

The goal of "Deliver!" is to build a bridge out of paper, paper clips, and pencils under tight time pressure. The better the bridge design, the more "vehicles" (or in this case, washers) it can hold.

According to Diane Soderholm, the Education Director for the GEL Program, "almost every team practiced key leadership skills while building a paper bridge on time, within their materials budget, and to the requirements specified."

Now I mentioned before how GEL students did a similar activity in an Engineering Leadership Lab earlier in the school year. So, how did the Open House visitors' performance stack up against those of MIT students?

Diane said that the visitors, including children, parents, and some real engineers, focused on "meeting the time, materials, and requirement specifications, and did not go for the 'cool' factor that trips up some MIT students." This is a lesson I've learned over and over in the GEL program. It's our instinct to push the boundaries sometimes, and so we forget what the customer asked for in the first place.

Leah '11 was helping at the GEL booth on Saturday, and commented on the activity's prime real estate in the Stata Center: "We were situated between a levitation station and the robots throwing tennis balls so we couldn't have asked for a better location."

The "Deliver!" station was also graced—not once, but twice!—with a visit by the ultimate MIT VIP: President Susan Hockfield!

After the Open House event, President Hockfield sent a note to program director Ed Crawley, saying "I greatly enjoyed the enthusiasm of the Gordon team, which amplified the dozens of other activities that lined Stata's student street. I don't know if the visitors or the MIT participants had a better time. Please thank your colleagues for showing the world how MIT works."

Her May 2nd email to the MIT community called the Open House a "smashing success:"

The campus sparkled, and, more important, so did the eyes of thousands of children who came to explore MIT and to glimpse their futures. Nothing captures that better than a note I received just hours afterward from an alumna who had brought her 6- and 11-year-old sons:

The best part was over dinner, when my kids sat there with paper and pencil trying to invent a different way to make the helium blimps they saw race. They [had] decided to forgo a trip to Toscanini's so they could get home even faster - as they had decided to make a 'robotic' arm from their pneumatic LEGOs, discussing the design all the way home ... The arm is already finished ... We have been home only 45 minutes."

It's been 30 years since an event like "Under the Dome" took place at MIT, but as a recent Tech article suggests, we probably won't have to wait that long for the next one.

Thanks to Bruce Mendelsohn for the pictures!

Flashback to 2004: a few weeks before high school started, I moved from Texas to California, and during a typical afternoon drive with my dad, we saw a house for sale. It was October and we were still living in an apartment three months after the move, so I wasn’t surprised when my dad pulled over “just to have a quick look” while the open house was going on.

We walked into what would eventually become my new home, and there was this carpet sporting a bright “Go Longhorns” shade of orange, and a life-sized stuffed panther doll in the middle.

To this day, I have no idea what was up with that panther. We got the house, ditched the carpet (we’re Aggies fans by the way), and the panther was lost in the process of moving in.

MIT is having an open house of its own this weekend, which will be the first of its kind in about 30 years. This event, if you didn’t already know, is going to be big. While Campus Preview Weekend welcomed several thousands of prefrosh and their families, the "Under the Dome" Open House is expecting tens of thousands of visitors to MIT’s campus. The jam-packed schedule includes activities relating to arts, energy, sciences, engineering, air and space flight, architecture, entrepreneurship, and MIT culture; the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) program is hosting its own activity, too, and I'm really looking forward to how people respond to it.

The program is hosting “Deliver,” a hands-on, interactive activity that we, the GEL students, participated in during an Engineering Leadership Laboratory last Fall. “Deliver” will be held in the Stata Center every hour on the half hour, in room 32-144.

I don’t want to give anything away because that would diminish the fun and excitement (don't worry, there will be a post-activity blog!), but it’ll be interesting to see whether groups fall into a lot of the same “traps” that we did when going through this activity. If you’ve been following my blog for a while and you’re curious about how GEL develops engineering leaders, “Deliver” will give you a quick taste of the program’s effectiveness.

With 407 and 10 hours, give or take an ear until I graduate, this open house is eerily coinciding with my experience of moving out of Texas. It’s exciting to be the open house attendee; it’s bittersweet to be the open house "host." I’m thrilled to share my MIT experience with alums, prospective students, and families, but I’m becoming more and more aware that my time here is winding down.

Anyway, Tanya's text begins below. Enjoy!
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It could have been any number of early mornings my freshman year at MIT. There I was, slaving over a 18.02 or 8.012 pset at 3AM, being really no closer to finishing than I was a few hours earlier. On his way through the lounge, one of the upperclassmen in my dorm stopped by to comfort me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “After this, the real world will be easy.”

I heard that sentiment echoed many times during my years at MIT from anyone from second-term freshmen to recent alums returning to regale us with tales of life after graduation. For most of my time at the Institute, I fully believed them, using their optimism and encouragement to convince myself to pull through just one more all-nighter. The problem is, being a recent graduate myself, I’m not entirely convinced they were right.

The problem with psets and labs are that they are confined, defined problems with a predetermined solution. You know when you have reached the “right answer,” and the problems are intentionally designed to be solved by one or two people, ideally of the same background and skill set. Ask anyone from the “real world” how realistic that situation is and chances are you’ll be greeted with a mixture of laughter and sympathetic looks.

MIT does the best job in the world for preparing you for the technical challenges you will face in industry, and if your future job involves sitting in a cubicle solving well-defined problems fed to you by a benevolent manager, then you’re in luck because the “real world” will probably seem pretty easy compared to your time at MIT.

However, for the vast majority of you who will work in teams made of people with diverse backgrounds on problems that are both ill-defined and complex, you may find that MIT only gave you a few pieces of the puzzle.

That’s why it’s so great that programs like GEL are becoming part of the MIT curriculum. GEL very much fills a hole left by traditional coursework, and that’s how to deal with all the parts of your job that aren’t solitary technical problem-solving. To highlight this gap, I’ll give an example from my own post-MIT experience.

When I started grad school, my first (and still ongoing) project was part of an industry collaboration with my lab and involved running a coordinated study across four countries, all of whom would have their own quasi-independent operating teams. One of those countries is China, and there have been a lot of unanticipated complications arising both from the language barrier and cultural differences.

Each of the teams also wanted to pull the project in a certain direction, and we had to make sure that the teams were given enough independence while still ensuring that their data would contribute to the overall project. Furthermore, our main industry contacts (and therefore the people to whom we had to report) were PR and marketing professionals who understood very little about academic research.

It has been a separate challenge to try to run a legitimate research project while also fitting into the timescale and budget imposed by our industry collaborators, all while justifying our decisions to people whose background and knowledge of the field is completely different.

I might have been in over my head, but luckily some of the core skills of the GEL program taught me how to work with people from diverse backgrounds and internationally.

Many GEL ELLs taught me effective communication skills so I could effectively share my ideas with someone of a non-technical background and, similarly, understand their point of view and goals.

My GEL InternshipPlus took me to England, where I learned to work with people from a different culture and in a different work environment. Finally, my contacts in the GEL program are a vital and consistent support network for me: I have reached out to the GEL staff for help with my current project even though I have graduated, and their assistance has been invaluable.

I can’t really say that any of my academic classes at MIT prepared me for many the challenges I’ve faced since graduating, and with the dynamics of both industry and academia changing rapidly, it’s reasonable to say that you too might be surprised by the things required of you once you leave the relative safety being evaluated based purely on coursework.

The value of the GEL program is in preparing you to face those challenges. Not only will you know more what to expect, but you will be prepared and will therefore excel in ways that you never knew you could.

I am grateful every day that I had GEL to teach me the things I never would have learned at MIT otherwise, and I know that I will apply many of the lessons I learned in the program throughout my career. I highly encourage all of you to take advantage of one of the best opportunities MIT has to offer. You won’t regret it.

I MADE FOOD!

GOOD FOOD!

Remember when I set my IAP resolution to cook dinner every night? Well, I did it!*

*Okay, I mostly did it. There were a few nights where I went to our student center convenience store for a pb&j bagel sandwich because we had a hard track workout that day and gosh darnit all I want is some peanut butter and some carbs after a tough run and I’m not in any mood to assemble it myself. Still, serving up two entrees with leftovers each week is mighty impressive in my opinion when I have UROP, Track, and play rehearsals going on.

By the end of IAP, I never knew when culinary creativity would strike. One Sunday, when I had an hour of free time between the end of a long run and a rehearsal (hang on, I’ll get to that), I decided that was a perfect time to make tiramisu. But I didn’t have mascarpone, or coffee, or even espresso. So I turned to greek yogurt and chai tea instead. It was like a melting pot tiramisu, and I ate it all.

I would say the biggest difference between this IAP and last IAP was my ruthlessness in adapting recipes. Some were my own changes (I put cranberries in the cheese gougeries because I had so. many. cranberries in my freezer), but others were friendly tips. A few hours before Operation: MacNCheese commenced, I was advised to add a little mustard in with the cheese. Now, my recipe called for nutmeg to be added with the cheese, and I had never made macaroni and cheese in any way, shape, form, or box in my life, but I was more than willing to make a game-day starting lineup switch.

This is because I don’t particularly like nutmeg.

Nutmeg is an excellent team player, but not a stand-alone star. To put this in elementary school terms, when you were choosing teams for dodgeball, you always picked cinnamon first, nutmeg second. Nutmeg is like the Ryan Seacrest of spices. It gets to mingle with all the hottest stars, but isn’t particularly talented itself. You see what I mean? Nutmeg: out. Mustard: in. Dinner: delicious.

Now, I could wrap up this uncharacteristically short entry with the implications of my cooking adventures (because believe me, there were adventures), detailing how I practiced important engineering leadership capabilities such as resourcefulness (there is no mascarpone within a 1-mile radius of my room which is significant since it’s snowy and oh look! Greek yogurt is right here), decision-making (do I follow through with the mustard advice?), and meeting a deadline (I will start eating uncooked cornmeal if I don’t get some French toast up on this plate). I could do all that, but there’s a pear clafouti recipe I’m dying to try so I better go.

I will leave you with proof of my other exciting IAP adventure that I briefly mentioned in my vlog intro video. I was in MIT Dramashop’s production of Hydriotaphia, in which I basically played a homeless woman from the 1600s. I used more conditioner in our two-week performance period than I probably normally do in a two-month period.

Middle: Xindi '10 and I as the Ranters in Tony Kushner's Hydriotaphia. Bottom: The Ranters try to convince Dame Dorothy (Alex '12) to come to America on their ship. Last two photos by Eric Levenson.

Okay, off to core some pears. If this entry drove your stomach crazy, feel free to click on the food pics to get the recipes!

As I hinted at in my last entry, Kevin '11, Joe '12, and I had an on-camera discussion about how GEL has affected our view on leadership. For your reference, Joe starts things off with a lesson from ESD.950, the Engineering Leadership class the three of us took in the first week of IAP.

Joe, who is the Chairman of The Tech, went on a field trip to MassWeb, the newspaper's publisher, over IAP! Photo by Sam Range '13.

At 2:25, I then recall my first leading experience from the Engineering Leadership Laboratory (ELL) last semester.

"Okay, where to begin?" was what I was thinking at the start of an activity where I led my ELL group, including Tiffany '11. Photo by Yasemin Gokce '11.

Then, at about 6:35, Kevin talks about a late-night adventure in the MIT tunnels in which he surprisingly relied on a lot of capabilities of engineering leadership that we learned from the ELL’s.

Kevin shared this awesome picture with me; last fall, he went to entrepreneurship conference at the New York stock exchange!

Enjoy!

For all you prospective undergrads out there, I hope these experiences show you how the Institute offers opportunities for students to live out MIT's motto of "Mens et Manus" ("Mind and Hand"). For all you aspiring engineering leaders in the classes of '12 or '13 (yes, a lot of current students still read these blogs!), here's the application for the GEL program that I reference at the end.

And in case you don't believe us...

The cabinets on their epic journey. Photo by Kevin.

It really worked! Photo by Yasemin Gokce '11.

So when two friends in the GEL program told me they’d like to help with an entry, I decided to go all-out and get some video up in this blog. Joe ‘12, Kevin ‘11, and I met up to talk about GEL, IAP, MIT, and any other 3-lettered abbreviations we have in common.

First, we’d like to introduce ourselves. Please excuse the rather, um, low lighting.

Off camera, we talked about questions that prospective students or students interested in the GEL Program might ask, and we wrote our responses so that you can get several points-of-view on the same topics.

Why did you apply to MIT?
Joe: I knew I wanted to study electrical engineering, and MIT is fantastic for that. The general ethos I got from meeting with some professors (who I would go on to take classes from) was also very appealing.

Maggie: I actually had a phase in high school where I thought I would never apply to MIT because I thought I wouldn’t “fit in” to such an engineering-focused institution. But I love Boston. And I loved my interview with my MIT EC. And I loved how Mystery Hunt was going on during my visit to campus. And I loved how people seemed to have true passions in what they did, whether that’s in programming or wooden roller coaster construction. I also loved that I could be on an athletics team or involved in a school newspaper with fellow engineers and scientists, not stereotypical “jocks” or students that don’t put academics first. And now I can’t imagine myself anywhere else.

Kevin: So, I visited schools the summer before senior year, and MIT really stood out to me. I have to admit - the academics seemed pretty daunting, but when I visited what really stood out was the culture. From the hackers scaling buildings under cover of night to the labs creating craziness in general, there really seemed to be a culture of 'It doesn't exist? Why not? Let's do it!' And that - I found really inspiring - the idea that you can really do something with technology was awesome.

I was told that learning to think like an engineer would be really useful and I've always enjoyed building things / tinkering with projects, so MIT seemed like a great fit. Also - I've long had an interest in entrepreneurship. So, basically my criteria was: awesome engineering school where people do / there's a good environment for startups. MIT fit the bill and has really, really been both of those things for me.

How did you find out about the GEL Program?
Joe: At the suggestion of a friend of mine, currently a GEL2, I looked into the program and applied.

Maggie: My advisor actually recommended it to me. The fact that someone personally brought up this opportunity made it seem like it was a good thing for me to explore.

Kevin: I found out about GEL through some juniors and seniors that I knew in the program. I think I may have seen a flier, but I really don't remember. What I saw also was some of my peers who were working on really solid projects and really learning how to lead were also applying. Knowing that I'd get to interact with awesome peers in a way that was outside classes really drew me to the program.

Why did you apply to GEL? What attracted you most?
Joe: GEL seemed different than most leadership programs - programs that I frankly have little respect for, because they seem to conflate giving a pep talk and a pamphlet with training in leadership or management. The program, like MIT as a whole, places a large emphasis on experience and actually doing things. The [Engineering Leadership Laboratories, or] ELLs, and ESD.950 experiences Maggie talks about are not unusual or uncommon experiences highlighted to make the blog more interesting (well, maybe the LEGO airplanes are. Most of the time we don't get to play with my childhood toys) - rather, they are the fundamental components of the program and the courses that comprise it. That "learn by doing" philosophy is probably the program's biggest selling point.

Maggie: I have a good friend in the program who’s also a chemical engineer and I think that whatever she does is cool so I followed suit. I sat in on an ELL and was really impressed with everyone’s energy. People came right up to me and introduced themselves, and I thought These are the kinds of people I want to work with. The staff, too, is very committed to its students. They seemed to make the students more confident in their abilities.

What surprised you about the GEL Program?
Joe: It actually challenged me. Most of my classes have definite answers – with enough time and reasonable diligence, every problem set has an answer. Sure, you can vary your assumptions or the specific method you use, but at the end of the day you're arguing over degrees of rightness. Not so in dealing with people and projects. I was surprised by the level of thought and rigor that you can put into everyday interactions, and more importantly, how large of an improvement you get from doing so.

Maggie: It’s the first time I look forward to working in a group. Everyone applied to this program, and so we all aspire to develop the capabilities of effective leadership, and group work goes hand in hand with these capabilities. I trust that fellow GELs will respect deadlines and deliver quality results.

Kevin: What surprised me about GEL, though I suppose it's probably a pre-requisite for entering the program, was the idea that you could actually learn how to be a better leader through practice. Like skills learned at MIT, it's NOT something you're born with.

In addition, the simulations in GEL are something I have taken outside to more 'real' decisions. In starting my own company in college (doing laser-etched business cards) and starting a music club, I saw how much having a solid leader really mattered. Times when I fell short were often not even technical, but rather in terms of leading the team - whether it was providing a clear direction, setting expectations, or really meeting the needs of team members (leadership is definitely a serving endeavor.)

I remember back to a really big product design class; I was supposed to help create a backboard for mountain rescue (see: Fortrus, circa 2009). When I didn't really step up and demonstrate leadership in terms of getting the materials, my team couldn't help me build it. As we missed deadline after deadline (really just one of the main important ones), it became clear that we needed to step up. One of the things we learn in GEL is an urgency to act - I ordered the materials - we built it. It was a super-crazy 2 week race to the finish, but we got it done.

Seeing how my classmates in the GEL program have done that in their organizations has inspired me to not let the backboard situation repeat itself, at least with the delays. Because the thing that I expected, but still never fails to amaze me - is how awesome the people I've interacted with in the program. They are students who are doing this so that they can really better serve their organizations, both in and out of MIT.

So, in a way, the reasons that I entered have been beyond fulfilled, and though MIT often does that, it was most certainly a pleasant surprise here.

I've learned (and will continue to learn) lessons that I will most certainly take into the real world as I endeavor to become a no-holds-barred entrepreneur.

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Okay, this is a lot of content, so I’ll be back later to post a video of our conversation about some of our favorite GEL experiences! What a teaser!

According to this survey, 85 percent of freshmen said they held some sort of leadership position in high school. Out of a list of various skills and abilities, freshmen ranked themselves most confident in their the ability to “function effectively as a member of a team.”

What do you guys think about these results?

During the past week, I asked Leo McGonagle (GEL Executive Director), Dr. Diane Soderholm (GEL Education Director), and Professor Ed Crawley (GEL Co-Director) about their opinions on the article and some of the leadership examples they see in GEL applications.

None of them were surprised about these statistics, but they all agreed that the results depend heavily on how students define a “leadership role.” They noted that sometimes a high school leadership opportunity can be more of a title than anything else, and I can definitely relate to this.

I was a captain of my Cross Country and Track teams in high school, and basically that meant don’t get in trouble, don’t get the team in trouble, and cheer a lot at races. I don’t even know how I became captain. I think one day my coach just announced it to the team.

Now, as a captain for the MIT Cross Country and Track teams, it’s a whole different picture. The entire team chooses the captains, who are expected to keep in touch with the team during the off-season, organize team dinners and other team events, prepare supplies for meets, oh and, of course, cheer. A lot. Being a captain now takes a lot more forethought and communication skills than the identical role in high school.

It’s a delicate balance of quality vs. quantity when it comes to leadership roles. “Many students feel they need to have positions/titles like that to compete for admission to highly selective colleges,” Leo said, adding, “Others have actually had real leadership positions in high school.”

When I asked Leo about his leadership experiences growing up, he said that it wasn’t until college that he had a memorable experience.

“I decided to develop my leadership skills at the next level through participation in Army ROTC in college,” Leo said. Since then, he’s been Executive Officer of a 600-soldier engineer construction battalion in Iraq, Commander of a 100-soldier mechanized engineer company in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Platoon Leader of a 30-soldier engineer platoon in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) during the Persian Gulf War, according to his bio on the GEL website.

Diane, who supervises leadership activities in several classes across the MIT departments, emphasized that “GEL gives students opportunities to practice and reflect on their leadership style and effectiveness.”

A distinction that Ed made was that the goal of the GEL Program is to develop leaders, not recognize them and give them some sort of “gold medal.” In past applications to the program, he’s seen students who are already leaders on campus and others who are simply interested in leadership.

During the GEL admissions process, each applicant is interviewed, and Ed says the interview reveals a lot about the applicants’ leadership experiences and aspirations. The two questions he says that the staff asks during admissions are:
1) Has the student demonstrated that he/she is on track to be a future leader?
2) Would this student benefit from the type of opportunities GEL provides?

In other words, does this student want to improve?

When looking at GEL applicants, Ed carefully considers students’ interest and intentions. He wants students to not just have something they “believe they can do,” but also something they simply “believe in.”

He told me a story about a Rhodes Scholar from Zimbabwe whom he met at Oxford University. Ed invited the grad student to come to MIT for his postdoc work. When the grad student said he planned to resurrect the economy of his nation as President, Crawley said he “hired him on the spot,” reasoning, “why wouldn’t you hire someone with aspirations to help his own people?” Last he heard, Crawley says his former student is in fact leading the Opposition Party in Zimbabwe, facing frequent arrests and brutality for the sake of his country.

Thus far in GEL I’ve learned a lot about leadership styles and when to use them. The academic lessons aren’t nearly as valuable as the hands-on activities, when I don’t really have time to cull through a catalog of leadership styles; most of the time I rely on experience and instinct to pick the right one.

Now that some of the GEL staff have had their say, I plan to talk with a couple fellow GEL students in my next entry to hear their stories about their GEL experience thus far!

I’m reigniting my IAP resolution to cook dinner for myself for every night in January. During the semester, I usually grab dinner at a dining hall, but now that I have the time to let out my inner Iron Chef, I’m dusting off the cookbooks and asking mom for advice. I was quite pleased with my culinary accomplishments last IAP, so I’m excited to give it another try.

First meal? Spaghettuna. You heard right. Spaghetti + tuna in red sauce = spaghettuna. I told my sister and her text message reply read, “Mmmm speghatuuuuuna :).” We don’t even agree on the spelling, but we know what it is. It’s very easy to make, but I realize the name can be a turn-off. I guess I’m just used to it by now; you see, I’ve come to understand that the Lloyd clan has its own vernacular.

For example, I have no idea what this is called.

I honestly don’t because my family calls them yadda-yaddees. Also, one time, while talking on live local television, my dad mentioned the word “fridgey” when referring to a refrigerator. The news anchor immediately interrupted to ask, “Did you just say fridgey?!”

Apparently my family relies on vague onomatopoeia and unique contractions to refer to everything, and it’s taken me two decades to realize no one else uses these terms.

The Lloyds are also prone to distractions. Where was I? Oh yes, IAP activities. Several MIT activities, such as athletics and UROPs, are in full swing, and the GEL Program is no exception.

Last week I pretty much lived in the Stata Center while taking ESD.950: “Engineering Leadership.” About 40 GELs participated in class discussions, worked in table groups, and reflected on some of the capabilities that define an engineering leader.

We worked under time pressure

We organized our thoughts

We created a fleet of Lego aircraft as part of a simulation based on Toyota Production System's operations

Needless to say, it was an action-packed week, and I’m interested to hear your opinions on some of the topics we covered:

• What are some misconceptions people have about leadership?
• How would you define leadership? (hint: this is harder than you think!)
• Which is a more favorable condition to find yourself in: a bad team with a good idea or a good team with a bad idea?

There’s another GEL class on Project Management in late January (a five-day intensive off-site class in New Hampshire), and UPOP, the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, starts this week.

UPOP is the preferred prerequisite for GEL because it teaches sophomores, who are just starting their engineering careers, everything from effective group work to proper interview etiquette. Although it’s a year-long program, UPOP culminates in a very intense one-week workshop.

I loved UPOP because it provided so many resources and linked me to UPOP staff willing to help me find an internship for the summer or look over my resume, all without “holding my hand” through the process.

But while I was in UPOP, I had a hard time realizing the significance of some of our assignments (for example, a journal during a summer internship and an interview with a mentor) and found them tedious. I realize that I now have a record from my early years in career development, and I can easily trace improvements and challenges I consistently face. UPOP is a time commitment, but its rewards will eventually come.

Which brings me to my final note about IAP. Today, the application for the 2011-2012 GEL Year One Program goes live. The application is very simple—doesn’t take long to complete—and like my time in UPOP, the application provides a “real-time” look at where a student is in his/her development as a leader.

Although the GEL Year One program is open to current MIT sophomores and juniors (as well as seniors in M. Eng. programs), over the next few weeks you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look from yours truly at the inner workings of the GEL admissions process; it’ll be interesting for young undergrads to see how the program considers each application. I’ve always wondered what the GEL staff looks for in its students, so this will be a learning experience for me, too!

So, why go through all these variously colored cards? It's all about feedback. Feedback and self-assessment are effective ways to track one's progress in a leadership program, when you can't really assign p-sets to test students' understanding of the material.

But aren't we getting maybe one card a month? How does that change anything? Yes, this requires the "little by little" argument, where I say that with each yellow card I fill out about myself, I learn just a little more than I did before about my role as a leader.

Not convinced? Well, here's another situation where a little bit of encouragement went a long way.

This past weekend, MIT's Cross Country Team raced at the New England Division III Regional Championships, the qualifying meet for NCAA Division III National Championships next weekend.

The thing is, no matter how many times I told myself "this is just another race," Regionals isn't quite any ol' race. You hear "Sandstorm," "Shipping off to Boston," and "Don't Stop Believing" over the speakers. There are NCAA signs everywhere. But the biggest difference from other races? The people. So many people.

It seems every team has its own cheering squad, and MIT is no exception. I had the pleasure of being one of the cheerers last year, and I ran around with a red "M" painted on my stomach like the Hester Prynne of Team Spirit yelling until my voice cracked and ringing my signature cowbell until I had to switch the grip between my frozen hands.

This year, our squad did not disappoint. They brought signs. (for the record, the first one spells out "ATACK 'MM" as in "ATTACK 'EM!" not "ATTACK, MM!" as I originally thought. Hey, attacking is delicious!)

Our support crew took the three-hour ride in a few crowded vans, waking up earlier than they probably would have liked to on a Saturday, all to support their teammates.

While I don't remember many details about that day (even though it was just last weekend) it's kind of hard to forget the feedback we runners got throughout the morning.

I'm standing at the starting line of the guys' race, which at that moment has to be the most concentrated area of adrenaline in all of western Massachusetts. You hear team cheers (Tufts University's "T-U-X-C!" tends to stand out because they have a massive support group, complete with gigantic flag). You hear coaches giving their last words of encouragement ("Now remember, guys..."). You hear teammates giving their last pep talks, which vary from "this is our last race of the season" or "first time at Regionals" to "this is my last race for Cross Country ever." There's a lot on the line.

And then, suddenly, all goes quiet. Like "All Quiet on the Western Massachusetts Front" quiet.

As the starter walks out in front of more than 300 athletes, everyone knows to shut up. Teams have cheered, coaches have made their statements and walked away, runners have grown still and now sort themselves along the single chalk line.

On race day, time doesn't feel normal. What seems like two seconds later, I'm warming up with the women's team.

At one point, the guys' race goes by and I notice Paul's REALLY close to the front. And then, woah, Roy's up there too! And Dan! And there's Stephen! And Gihan and Richard are coming up, too! And there goes Joe!

We knew. Something was happening.

The guys win a race that at the start they were ranked to be in 9th place. They were going to Nationals. The seniors get one more race after all.

Another "two seconds" go by, and I'm a little over a mile into my own race.

No, now I'm halfway done. No, now it's a mile left. And now time just stops.

I've been in this mile for hours. But here and there, I can hear it: "M-I-T! M-I-T! M-I-T! GO MAGGIE! YOU’VE GOT THIS!" A blur of bare skin and red body paint. A neon poster-what does it say? Doesn't matter, they're just yelling for me to GO!-flashes by in a second. What seems like two hours later, I'm finishing.

The women get 4th, which doesn't seem quite as glamorous when compared to the guys' miracle 8-km race, but we still know that we raced our best. Plus, the women’s 4th place finish is good enough to qualify for Nationals in Iowa, so the team gets another chance, along with the guys, to race hard next weekend.

Anyway, had it not been for the cardinal and grey whirlwind tearing across fields and wilderness to get to the next best cheering spot, it would have been pretty difficult to convince ourselves to keep pushing the pace. Sure, we could hear the cheers for only a few seconds before we passed the MIT cheering squad, but this is a 6-km race. Add up all those strategically placed words of encouragement, and it's really hard to forget why we're racing.

The point is, feedback is important and meaningful. The results of feedback aren't always immediately tangible (like in the weekly GEL ELLs), but can be extremely motivational (like at XC Regionals). To all those who were out there cheering, screaming, waving signs, and bearing body paint proudly: your feedback definitely worked.

Tests introduce a whole new variable in time management because you could always argue that you’re not done studying. Fortunately, my classes for the GEL program are relatively free of curveballs when it comes to tests. Now that I’ve settled into my courses, I thought I’d tell you about the GEL classes that I’m taking this semester.

15.668: People and Organizations (9 units)
(mentioned earlier by Jenny!)

The 9 units mean that this course is a slightly smaller time commitment than the standard 12-unit MIT class. At the beginning of the semester, I heard there would be a midterm, but this wasn’t a deal-breaker for me. The midterm was a few weeks ago, and asked us to apply some of the concepts we learned in class to real case studies, such as the merger between US Airways and America West. Now that we’ve gotten past our only test in the class, we’re working on an individual paper about an organization of our choice and group paper about any organization’s response to an important situation (How did company A react when it developed budget cuts? What did company B do when a piece of legislation was passed?).

This is my first course 15 (Business) class, and definitely stands out from all my other classes this semester. Not only does it challenge students to think outside the “p-set zone,” it helps us think in different ways than we would in our engineering classes. Our readings have covered contingent labor, evolving trends in the workplace, strategic design in an organization’s structure, and case studies on real companies that look at the cultural, political, and organizational elements that set it apart from other companies. Plus, we’ve practiced our negotiation skills in three different scenarios.

It seems that the majority of students in this class are either course 15 minors or GEL students. Also, it takes place in the new Sloan Building, so it’s nice to get out of standard lecture halls and TEAL classrooms (although it is quite a walk from my classes along the infinite corridor).

The class is broken into several table groups that discuss class topics and work on projects together throughout the semester. For example, in October the class looked at BP and the summer’s oil disaster. Some groups are focused on the cultural, political, or organizational elements of BP as a company, one looked at BP’s technical background, and another facilitated the discussion. This way, we tackled a huge topic as a class while learning about specific areas of the situation.

ESD.05: ELL—Engineering Leadership Lab (3 units)

I have to admit, I was pretty excited when I signed up for ELL. I had visited two sessions last spring when I was considering the GEL Program, and I was most impressed with the focus on hands-on activities and constant feedback on performance.

The ELL is a two-hour class on Fridays, so it’s also a nice end-of-the-week session because the last thing I want after a week of lectures is a lecture on “how to be a leader” or “the definition of success.” Instead, we’re building bridges out of office supplies, watching videos portraying engineering leaders in action, and competing against other table groups in GEL-pardy (a game of Jeopardy that reinforces the many requirements of the GEL program).

Our homework for ELL includes a self-evaluation of our performance in an ELL activity and a feedback form for the GEL year two students (students in their second year of the GEL program who help lead the ELLs), so they can monitor what’s worth repeating next year and what can be improved upon. The three units mean that this is not a huge time commitment at all.

My hope for these classes is that, while I gain the engineering skills in my Chemical Engineering major, I learn how to work with others who may or may not share my technical background. By looking at various organizations and their engineering structure and evaluating my own leadership skills, these classes should give me a well-rounded introduction to engineering leadership.

A “weekend off” happens once or twice every Cross Country or Track season, during which we don’t have a meet. Doesn’t sound like a big deal? Oh, it is. Many distance runners around the nation long for just one Saturday morning without a race on their mind and a meet that will last several hours on their schedule. Halloween the night before a meet? Save your candy ‘til later. Homecoming on Saturday night? Prepare to dance on sore legs. SAT test that morning? You can make it just in time to start warming up.

The funny thing is that a “weekend off” isn’t really “off.” We’re definitely still running, but the fact that I can actually get homework done on a Saturday, or go grocery shopping, or do both AND watch an episode of “Glee” just blows my mind.

Did I mention that, after my awesome weekend, my Wednesday problem set deadline got moved to Friday? So essentially all I had to do was study for my Genetics test. In my book, that’s a win. This was turning out to be the perfect storm of weekends off.

And so this is what I did.

Friday

GEL Mentoring Social!
You were probably wondering how I was going to tie this in with the GEL program. Well, since you asked, I attended the GEL Mentoring Social during our Friday afternoon Engineering Leadership Lab.

The purpose of this social was to introduce the GEL students to their mentors, who have worked in industry professions and thus have some experience in engineering leadership. Each mentor has 3-4 mentees, so this was a good opportunity to get to know fellow GEL students as well!

My mentor happens to be a member of the LGO (Leaders for Global Operations) Program at MIT, in which students receive a Masters degree in some area of engineering combined with an MBA from the Sloan School of Management. My group discussed everything from career aspirations to our weekend plans.

Tortellini!
Friday night dinners usually include pasta because that’s what a lot of runners like to eat the night before a race. This Friday night dinner was no different, except I made the pasta. Yes, I made it, wondering Why haven’t I made pasta before?! It’s so fun! A group of us in the Tech Catholic Community made plates and plates of tortellini and it was delicious!

Saturday

GEL Picnic!
After getting to know our mentors the day before, the GEL students gathered on Kresge Lawn for a typical, fun picnic. And by “typical” I mean “featuring a competition between table groups that had us darting all around campus and answering the most random engineering-related trivia questions ever.”

Basically, the GEL staff posted signs around campus, each of which had a corresponding number and trivia question. Our goal was to find these signs, record the number and question, and report back to the picnic spot in less than an hour.

Points were awarded based on how many signs we visited and how many questions we answered correctly. We were given three campus maps, one of which told us where each station was; my team simply copied the information onto the two blank maps and set off in different groups. These are just a few of the questions we faced. How many of these can you answer?

What is 78% N₂, 21% O₂, 0.9% Ar, 0.033% CO₂, 18ppm Ne, and 5ppm He?
What is...

What is Y=stress/strain?
What is CH₃CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₂CH₃?

Well, our team didn’t win, but we did enjoy the picnic! Some groups brought in really fabulous food to go along with the barbecue fare!

(left) The MIT work/play balance in action: GEL Year Two students Anjaney '11 (left) and Matt '11 (right) have fun while Adrian '12 diligently prepares his dessert.
(right) Leo McGonagle, Executive Director of the GEL Program, asks Danielle '11 about her team's performance in the competition.

Oh, wait, Genetics test! I mean, clean my room!
Just as I was about to sit down to continue the studying I had started earlier in the week, I realized that cleaning my room was a higher priority. But this wasn’t my typical “fold my clothes, clear my desk” kind of cleaning. This was “I am going to make shelf labels so I can finally know where all my stuff is, and then I will clean the floor, and then I will finally unpack the one box that had been sitting in the corner of my room since Orientation” kind of cleaning. And it felt awesome. I have a clear desk again.

Okay, really Genetics study time!
Clearly, my cleaning escapade had completely sidetracked me, so I needed to get out of my room if I was going to have any chance of focusing on Genetics. I gathered all my materials and set up camp in Baker House’s quiet study room. I love this room! It’s a little hidden, so there are zero distractions, and lots of desk space to spread out!

I love this room! It’s a little hidden, so there are zero distractions, and offers lots of desk space to spread out!

Enough studying! Movie!
Two things I do significantly less of when I’m at MIT is drive and watch movies. I emailed out to my sorority, Pi Beta Phi, and asked if anyone wanted to see the cheesy, “Mean Girls-esque” high-school comedy film, “Easy A.” We filled an entire row at the theater, and got some frozen yogurt at Berryline afterwards.

As a Californian, I’ve tried my fair share of yogurt chains, but this one had evaded me until this weekend. I full-heartedly enjoyed my kiwi, mango, strawberry topping combination.

Sunday

Early Run!
I love morning runs. They make me feel so productive and it’s rather nice to get out before the campus turns into its usual bustling self.

Here’s a fact: not many college students are awake at 7:00 on a Sunday morning. I’m pretty sure most of the ones still awake just hadn’t gone to bed yet.

Baker desk!
This is, in my opinion, the best job for students. Working at the front desk of a dorm means you meet a lot of residents, help them check out movies and room keys, and maintain dorm security. Plus, you’re essentially being paid to do homework or watch movies on your laptop.

Last Genetics study period!
I find myself studying Genetics yet again. I take a practice test in testing conditions (at a clear desk, without notes, timing it with a stopwatch) and it doesn’t go too well. That’s okay. I definitely prefer identifying my weak points in the course material a day before the test rather than during the test itself. After a few more hours of reviewing, I’m ready to go.

So there you have it. When I went to bed on Sunday, I reveled in my clean room, my Genetics preparedness, and my good memories from a well-spent “weekend off.”

Truth be told, I’m still a little hazy on the distinction of what makes an engineering leader, so at this past week’s MIT Career Fair, I set out to discover what industry professionals have to say about it.

The Career Fair is like a carnival for job-seeking undergrad and grad students. Some students go to learn about companies, some go to find internships for the following summer, and some, let’s be honest, just snag free stuff (shirts, paperweights, product samples, erasable highlighters, candy, rubber duckies: you name it, you can probably find it at the booths, complete with branded company names).

Now, I’m a junior, so the Career Fair is starting to get a little more important. I’m at the phase of my life where I’m deciding whether I want to continue in school and get an advanced degree after my time at MIT or if I want to jump into a career straight out of college. Both are equally valid career paths.

The Career Fair is a great place to get conversations going, pass around my resumé, and ask specific questions about what the company is looking for in its candidates.

So what did I learn about engineering leadership? There are a lot of different businesses out there, and their answers were just as varied as the companies I talked to.

International company: You’ll be working on your own, but be prepared to work in groups

Most of the international companies with whom I spoke have a wide variety of employees working around the globe on their own projects. From what I could understand, it’s up to members of these companies to commit to a project and then connect with others in different countries. So, an engineer in Kenya might advise someone in management who is in charge of operations in Africa on the next best course of action, depending on what the project goal is.

Looking at the website of one international company in particular, these guys say communication skills are key, as well as team leadership. If you can’t explain your project to others, that can be a problem because there aren’t many employees working on the same project! The company needs YOU to advise others on YOUR project, so effective communication and the ability to work well with others is a big plus for this company.

Hmmm…effective communications skills—one of the attributes I’m learning in the GEL program!

Small company: Be ready to work from Day One

I next talked to a representative of a small programming company with fewer than 20 employees. When I asked him what kind of leadership qualities does his company look for in its applicants, he quickly responded that they need employees willing to take initiative. He then told me how his friend got an assignment on his first day of work in this company! In school, we’re trained to ease into classes, but in small companies like this one, there is little to no “let’s read through the syllabus and review very basic concepts” discussion.

Hmmm…taking the initiative and identifying informal leadership opportunities—two more attributes I’m learning in the GEL program!

Large company: First, we test your technical skills; then, we look at your leadership skills

The last representative I talked to was from a huge company with more than 100,000 employees. With that large of a work force, it’s hard to keep track of every single employee. According to the representative, the company tends to observe its employees’ technical skills first; after some time at the company, she said, they begin to take leadership skills into account.

The website mentions that this company looks for “innovative” employees. I was excited to see that this company sponsors leadership training courses and even mentoring opportunities, which shows that even huge companies want every employee to develop into an effective leader.

The GEL program assigns each of its students to a mentor, too, in order to achieve GEL goals such as leadership development, knowledge sharing, career development, and diversity.

I know I’m throwing a lot of terms out there about communication, initiative, and group work skills. In my next post, you’ll discover a little more about these and other elements of engineering leadership that I’m learning in GEL thus far!

While the weather attempts to dampen our moods, campus-wide excitement will not be contained once Orientation starts this weekend. I remember my Orientation very well; I had just come back from FLP (Freshman Leadership Program), a Freshman Pre-Orientation Program, and was so excited to explore MIT for a full week. There seemed to be events going on 24 hours a day! While this was exciting, it was also overwhelming.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to go to every single Orientation event. Freshmen, that’s why I recommend looking through the schedule, choosing what interests you, and saving time for last-minute decisions. Oh, and grab tons of free food. It’s pretty much the pivotal element to many Orientation events.

Believe it or not, Orientation is also a great opportunity to learn about internships. In their sophomore year, many GEL students were enrolled in UPOP (Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, not to be confused with UROP, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program), but it’s never too early to explore career opportunities!

If you’re interested in becoming an engineering leader, or discovering more about UPOP or the Gordon program, there are plenty of opportunities to do so during Orientation:

- Wednesday, September 1st (2-3:30, Johnson Ice Rink): The GEL program will have a booth at the Academic Expo. Stop by and talk to students about their experiences with engineering leadership!

- Thursday, September 2nd (1-1:30, room 12-196): An open house with snacks in the UPOP office. (More free food!)

The UPOP office is a great resource that teaches career skills and encourages leadership development. Next week I have a personal UPOP meeting in which someone from the office will show me how to improve my resume. Then, there’s another meeting for GEL students to review their internships over the summer and talk about plans for the next year.

But Orientation Week isn’t about UPOP or GEL or me; it’s about you! The people you meet, the activities in which you participate, the places you go during Orientation Week can really set a pattern for your time at MIT.

My advice: choose your activities carefully. Consider activities in which you could be interested. Throw in some random choices. And remember: go for the free food!

Oh, and enjoy the upcoming weather:

I consider myself an avid daycationer. When you live within an hour and a half of Lake Tahoe, the bay area, wine country, and Monterey, you tend to be a daycationer.

I started this summer with some easy trips. A day on Folsom lake in June…

was followed by a walk around Sonoma, and through an amusing grocery store, in July.

As for running, I don’t have many pictures of that because this is what happens when my mom tries to take a picture of me.

But I can say these shoes were once black…

and these containers were once full.

Of course, there was plenty of Jamba Juice (a popular smoothie chain) and frozen yogurt along the way. The toppings are the best!

By the time August came, my family and I were ready for a real adventure. It all started with my mom’s DVD set on National Parks. Or did it all begin when I read an article on the epic Dipsea Race this summer? Either way, somehow Muir Woods, a beautiful national monument of Coastal Redwoods near the bay area, came into family discussion and we decided it’d be worth a daytrip.

One thing I noticed is that my hair is definitely not used to the bay area climate. We left dry, mid-90s Sacramento only to arrive at the extremely foggy (extremely, I tell you!) mid-60s Muir Woods.

When we got there, we had a variety of paths to choose from, although some of the trail names were misnomers:

We passed the “not-really-an-ocean-view Ocean View Trail,” crossed a bridge, and journeyed into the forest. Of course, there were tons of Kodak moments along the way.

But eventually I got bored of “posing by trees” pictures, so I started looking for new angles. I thought, “hey! I’ll take a picture of my brass rat so I can say my MIT ring was at a national monument.” Success! Although you can’t really tell it’s in a California forest.

I upped my game and suspended my ring on a branch, right next to a spider web reflecting sunlight, and just as I’m snapping the photo, someone on the trail behind my family says, “Is that a brass rat?” We all slowly turn around, basically thinking the same thing: what did you say?

Turns out, an MIT alum happened to be walking by at the exact moment I had my ring off, on the same trail in the middle of the same forest 3,000 miles away from Cambridge. Wow. Better yet, he was wearing his ring, too. Photo opp!

The true brass rat aficionado will notice the alum’s bezel is turned outwards, with the beaver facing the world, while the current undergrad’s bezel is inward.

Brief intermission: remember when I was telling you about how people ask a lot of MIT questions? This unexpected meeting reminded me of the importance of the “elevator speech.” I learned about this in my Foundations of Engineering Leadership (FEL) session over IAP.

It’s no secret that people will want to know what you do at MIT, so it’s helpful to have a 30-second spiel about yourself ready. Of course, you might need to tweak it a little depending on who’s asking the question (future employers won’t be that interested in what dorm I live in; alums probably will be), but it makes things a little smoother when you know what to say when faced with the typical MIT questions. I’m sure it’ll come in handy in my classes for the GEL Program!

[Intermission is over; please return to your seats.]

By the way, the alum at Muir Woods also mentioned that his daughter would be attending MIT this year. Hey, Sarah ’14, how’s it going?

But our adventures were far from over. A few miles away was Stinson Beach. When most people think of California beaches, they might think of, oh, I don’t know, sun. And maybe Katy Perry. Neither were present at the beach this day. It was freezing and windy and we were just about to pack up and leave when we saw—get ready for this—Bubble Man.

I don’t know if he really goes by the name Bubble Man, but he does now. He’s a Steve Martin look-alike who has this bubble system that makes GIGANTIC bubbles. The kids were going crazy. Okay, I was too.

Not to be outdone, the Lloyds decided to pursue our own mega bubble capabilities back in Sacramento. If there were ever a family that personified the saying, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” my family would be it. We love science; we love engineering; we love weird things. Apparently, you only need a few ingredients to make mega bubbles. Unfortunately, these aren’t your everyday ingredients. Things like restaurant-quality Dawn soap and, to put it nicely, veterinary supplies for horses.

Once we got the ingredients, we mixed them in a pot that we definitely cooked dinner in the night before. I really hope we don’t use this pot again. Equine pasta sounds just wrong.

The learning curve for this process is fantastic. You make a lot of little bubbles, you change your technique, you make a freakishly large bubble that goes into traffic and pops on some innocent driver’s windshield. I’ll let the pictures below tell the rest of this story.

]]> Miscellaneous, 2010-08-15T12:27:39+00:00 Maggie L. '12 http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/glass_ceiling http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/glass_ceiling Note: This entry is the second part of my blog last week, in which I described my lessons from the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL).

I had gone the whole weekend without a picture until a few minutes before I left. Quick! Stand next to the official-looking poster!

I’ve been fortunate in my life because I was never aware of any glass ceiling; my future looked more like an open sunroof. My family supported my interests, whether I said I wanted to be a teacher, a cop, or a dog kennel owner.

Growing up, I always liked math, but when I got to high school, I, like many of you, realized I loved math and science. Mine was the type of school in which women were encouraged to take on math and science because it was one of those all-girls schools. Yes, we wore plaid skirts.

In high school, all of my science teachers were female. They were such great role models because they were absolutely passionate about the subject they were teaching. Their motivation was contagious, and thinking of myself as a scientist became second nature.

So once I got to MIT, where women make up about half of the undergraduate population, I never felt different for being a female engineer. In fact, Elizabeth ’11, a ChemE friend, told me about the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program and got me really excited about it. In May, I visited the GEL program’s final leadership lab of the semester, during which a graduation ceremony for the GEL class of 2010 took place. It was encouraging to see how optimistic the graduating GELs were. Both the men and women seemed excited to jump into their post-MIT lives. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Elizabeth named GEL ‘11 class leader for next semester! In this role, she will coordinate program activities and allocate resources while working with both GEL staff and students.

These opportunities make me optimistic of the future, too. I often try to imagine the reactions I’d get if I told people 50 years ago that I was an engineering student at MIT participating in an engineering leadership program. I got my answer, unfortunately, in 2010.

While in a cab going to the airport from the NCCWSL, which I mentioned in my last entry, dressed in my business casual attire, the driver asked me what I was in town for. Being the courteous passenger, I told him about the leadership conference. “So you want to be a leader?” he asked, waving his fist in a “you go girl” kind of manner. He then added, “I thought you were a model. I wouldn’t think someone like you would be into leadership.”

This is really what he said to me.

It was the first time that I saw a tiny piece of a glass ceiling close over my head—how ironic for it to happen after a few days of seminars and conversations about assumptions like this at the conference. It may not seem like a big deal when considering what some women have been through to get where they are today, but there’s something about the phrase “someone like you” that sets all sorts of alarms off in my head.

Maybe telling you to explore science or chase your dreams would be like preaching to the choir, but you never know whose lives you all can change by acting as a role model for others. Get involved, network, talk to people, talk to non-science people. Let’s get this conversation going and we’ll keep it going in this blog and on campus.

]]> Life & Culture, 2010-07-21T03:21:33+00:00 Maggie L. '12 http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/women_leaders http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/women_leaders Ann Curry is my idol. This NBC reporter is somehow able to balance an aura of professionalism, grace, and personality whether she’s reporting on the economy or having fun on “The Today Show.” She’s actually one of the reasons I have an interest in journalism today. What’s incredible to me is the fact that the granddaughter of a Japanese rice farmer can fit so well within a career that is still considered to be male-dominated.

According to The Secrets of Powerful Women, women represent only 17% of the seats in Congress, lead only 15 Fortune 500 companies, and hold a mere 3 percent of top positions in mainstream media. In a Brown University study of 1,000 men and 1,000 women, this book said women were twice as likely to say they were not qualified to run for office. When women do run, they win in same percentages that men do.

It sounds silly, but this is just one of those hidden truths. When I first heard about the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, I didn’t want to apply because I honestly did not think I could be both an engineer and a leader. Isn’t being just one of those hard enough? I didn’t give myself a reason to step up, but thankfully someone else did. I got an email from the program saying a member of my department had recommended I join the GEL program, and that was all I needed to apply. Just a little jolt of confidence can really go a long way!

Before you read any further, I want to emphasize that the point of this isn't to suggest that men are poorer leaders than women. My point is that, despite being the land of opportunity, the US is ranked 71st internationally in women’s political representation. Even though newsrooms are full of women, all those women are less likely to be in top editorial positions. Before this summer, I probably wouldn’t have paid too much attention to these statistics.

This June, I attended the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders in College Park, Maryland, and met women similar to Mrs. Curry who had the drive and courage to enter certain careers in a time when women just didn’t do that. I decided to attend this conference because I wanted to step out of the MIT bubble and interact with other aspiring leaders from across the nation.

My biggest lessons from this event simply came from talking to conference speakers and fellow attendees. On the second night, I met with Marie Tillman, whose husband Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan after leaving the NFL to join the Army. Marie was honored by the conference committee as a Woman of Distinction for her advocacy for military and veteran families through the Pat Tillman Foundation, which she founded in 2004. The fact that this powerful woman was willing to talk one-on-one with the conference-goers showed me that no one is too “high and mighty” to help a fellow woman.

Talking to my fellow conference-goers was also an eye-opening experience. When I told one woman that I was a chemical engineer, she asked if I was the only woman in my classes. What a strange question, I thought. Of course not. This happened three more times that day.

I realized that some people still don’t consider engineering as a “woman’s subject,” and I was shocked. If there’s one thing I learned from this weekend, it’s that we need to get the message out to girls that they can aspire to a future in science and engineering.

I brought up this point to the conference’s keynote speaker, Laurie Westley, who is the national director of government relations and advocacy for Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA). I talked to her about how I’m interested in science and engineering, and she referred me to the Eastern Massachusetts Council of the GSUSA in Boston, which sponsors a variety programs for young girl scouts. This leads to one of those lessons you just learn with practice: networking works.

Check back next week for part two of this blog entry, in which I’ll share with you my story about bumping up against the glass ceiling.

*The title of this entry is a quote from one of the longest-running prime-time United States television series. Do you know what show that is?

]]> Life & Culture, 2010-07-13T04:15:16+00:00 Maggie L. '12