That Lovely Pre-Finals Period by Anthony R. '09

I just presented some intercultural communication challenges in the IBM/Lenovo merger for class. It was a team project on mergers as a whole, with each of us choosing a merger case and exploring its respective aspects of communication. The final report, some 33+ pages worth, is due Friday by 11:59:59 PM. I love assignments due by email. :-) I still need to finish a few pages for Friday, along with studying a bit for my (last!) French exam, but that doesn’t mean I need to wake up any earlier than 11 all week.

There’s a lot of buzz on campus right now about some proposed changes to the GIRs (General Institute Requirements). These are the sorts of changes that affect future classes (maybe you), so naturally there are opinions of all kinds about tradition and change. Today’s MIT home page spotlight is the Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons, so apparently other people think it’s worth a look as well!

I personally think that the current structure of required/core classes leaves much to be desired, but it can be quite helpful for freshmen to take a variety of subjects when they aren’t sure what they want to study as upperclassmen. And while this isn’t the approach most advertised to incoming freshmen, even if you do know what you want to study, you don’t *need* to take all of the GIRs your first year. If it suits you, it’s certainly beneficial to mix things up a bit with more than one elective course in the spring term, or even one or two in the fall. I guess it depends on the four-year class plan of the department in which you plan to major.

I’m being encouraged to post more often by various folks around here, so I think one way to accelerate this strategy is for me to carry my camera around far more often. I’m going to take pictures of random things during the day and see what happens.

To the newly un-waitlisted folks, congratulations!

On a more organized note, what are you guys doing this summer? I’ll be at MIT, staying in East Campus, but probably working full-time on a fairly interesting train schedule project. (Yes, I think train schedules are fascinating. I have boxes upon boxes of them!)