What a change! Lot's of people are now filling "our" familiar hallways. There are 396 students in the MBA class of 2011... and this is considered a small MBA program. I guess it wouldn't be so shocking except that there were only 47 of us this summer. I've been in a single lecture in undergrad that was bigger than our class here at Sloan.
Two days of fall orientation down, two days to go. We started the first day by FILLING the ballroom at the Marriott in Kendall Square where there was breakfast and several distinguished speakers. We then broke out into our individual cohorts. Cohorts are named after oceans and thus often referred to as "oceans" instead of cohorts. The term ocean sounded very strange the first time I heard this before I started the program but now it is assimilated into my vocabulary. In each ocean, we are then broken into core teams which are individually named after birds. For example, I am an Atlantic Penguin. I'm in the Penguin core team in the Atlantic Ocean (cohort). We will attend classes together this fall with our ocean and work on homework and projects with our core team.
Orientation continued with a leadership session and a general information session followed by a mixer at a local tavern to end the day.
Day two consisted of a trip to the Warren center where we participated in team building activities... similar to Outward Bound during the first week of LGO orientation or the Leadership Reaction Course towards the end of summer. Half of the class piled onto 5 charter busses and headed out to the Framingham, MA area. The other half the class stayed around campus for other activities and we'll switch tomorrow.
Pictures to come from the Warren Center but the highlight of this trip was the raft building exercise. We were given barrels, 2x4 boards, and rope with which we built a raft and paddled out to a raft. It was a chilly morning (to be wearing shorts), and luckily only a few people fell in the water. Overall, the weather was BEAUTIFUL and the day was a blast!
After a little more orienting, I'll be ready for fall classes to start next wednesday. Bring it on!
