Read Read Read

Reading: The story of my life these days. My family is in for the weekend. In anticipation of trying to spend as much time with them, I tried to read ahead as much as possible. With my class load, that can be a lot of reading. See exhibit A:

Exhibit A: My books, course readers, and notebooks for the semester.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

They say, once you move to Boston, unless you have strong affiliations to another baseball team, you will become a Boston Red Sox Fan (sorry Indianapolis Indians). Today, I took my first step towards inevitability by attending my first Red Sox game.

My classmate Tye had tickets for friday's game, which was postponed till Sunday due to rain. She was unable to go on Sunday, so I jumped on the opportunity. Luckily she had 3 tickets available, so I immediately called my Boston Culture Guides (brother Dave and wife Rebecca) to join me in the adventure. The met me at my apartment, we walked to the subway and were on our way.

The weather was beautiful. 75 degrees, and low humidity. Our seats provided a great view and plenty of shade too keep us cool and comfortable.

I had heard that a baseball game at Fenway Park was unlike a baseball game at any other park. I've never been a huge fan of baseball. I won't watch it on TV, but I'll enjoy attending a game, but to be honest they can get somewhat boring. For the first 5 or so innings, the experience at Fenway was essentially no different than my past experience. The pitcher pitched, the hitter swung, and the catcher caught. Occasionally there was a pop fly or a foul and if we were lucky, a batter would get a base or two and eventually a run. Go Baseball.

Sometime in the 6th, everything changed. One of the Red Sox hitters cracked a ball deep to left field, straight for the famed Green Monster. The ball bounced off the tall green wall and everyone cheered as the hitter rounded first and slid into 2nd. At this point it seemed as though the Red Sox came alive along with Fenway!

The next hitter was "Big Papi". The entire stadium clapped and chanted his name as he swung and waited through pitches to a full count. At the full count, the stadium clapped in unison, and Big Papi ripped one into right field just feet short of a home run. The stadium erupted and the energy carried through the rest of the game.

A few and innings a few runs later, the Sox were up 3 to 1 at the top of the 9th. The crowd favorite closing picture Papelbon took the mound and finished the game with 38,000 fans focused on one ball moving around the beautiful green field.

Due to backup on the subway, we opted to walk home on the beautiful afternoon, which provided us with this great photo opportunity! Thanks for the tickets Tye!!!

The Apartment

This has been a long time coming. I have no excuses at this point. I've shown you the building where I live, I've shown you pictures from the roof of the building where I live, but I haven't shown you inside. Here we go!

Here's the living room, complete with decorations from our Around the World Party. All furnishing complements of my brother Dave and his wife Rebecca. Thanks guys!

Here is the rest of the living room. Artwork and TV complements of roommate Kevin. The tracklighting is built into the apartment.

Here is the kitchen, with roommate Kevin prepping our "last meal" of the summer before we headed off to the airport. It's a little messy from the end of summer party the night before.

Here is the hallway with exposed brick accents, track lighting, and metal pipe.

My "dorm room" style bedroom, complete with bed, desk (with homework sitting on it), TV (in the corner looking through the shelves on my desk)....

plastic dresser drawers, and bike on the wall!!!

Here's our last meal of the summer. Somehow only the girls from our class seemed to be able to attend. Steak fajitas, guacamole, and chips! Thanks for cooking Kevin!

Fall Classes!

Fall classes have begun! Like any semester, it has started with a TON of reading. The stack of books and course notes for this semester dwarf any other semester I have ever had in school. Probably because my course load dwarfs any other course load I have ever had. Here are the classes I am taking:

Economic Analysis for Business Decisions (Econ)

Financial Accounting (Accounting)

Organizational Processes (OP)

Communication for Managers (Comm)

Financial Theory I

Marketing Managment

Sustainable Energy

Leadership and Ethics

Proseminar

The first 4 are part of the MBA Core, the fundamental classes that all MBA's take in the first semester of the first year. The true MBA's also take Data Models and Decisions, but as and LGO, I took the class over the summer.

The next two course are the "electives" for the MBA Core. MBA's typically only choose one, but as and LGO we have three electives in addition to the core. I wanted to get a solid base in finance, so I started with that course. The visiting marketing professor was HIGHLY recommended. Given that this is his last semester, I then selected Marketing. My third elective is in the form of Sustainable Energy, which will contribute to my master of science in engineering.

Finally, as LGO's we are taking the required proseminar class where various industry speakers will come in to speak to the class. We are also given the option to take the Leadership and Ethics class co-taught by several faculty and industry leaders included Don Davis, 20 year CEO of Stanley Works. Mr. Davis is 88 years old, and after 20 years at MIT (after 41 total years at Stanley Works) he continues to teach the class for the LGO program.

So far, the fall semester seems like it'll be a big one. Time to put my head down and charge through it! I can almost see December from here!

Knocking off the Rust

Today's Date: September 7th

I have my first class of fall semester tomorrow, which means I have homework to finish tonight. Not much but it still counts.

The last time I did homework... August 17th. That's 3 entire weeks of no homework. I'm not saying I'm not excited or I'm not ready for classes to begin... I'm just not quite ready for the homework. At least we start slowly with one class tomorrow, and one on wednesday. Then the schedule ramps up into full speed next week.

Wish me luck!

US Open

The US Open tennis tournament, one of the 4 Grand Slam tournaments known for late night matches and rowdy crowds, large stadiums, tons of people, and the sound of planes taking off from La Guardia airport. The event in person up held all of it's hype.

Classmates Ben and Tim organized a trip for 15 of us to attend a match at the US Open this year. This was a great opportunity to visit the big city and experience the US Open that I've seen on TV for years first hand. The event was stunning, the tennis was outstanding, and the company was stellar!

Our seats were very close to the top of Arthur Ashe Stadium, but the view was great and we could be a little more noisy during the matches without disturbing the players.

We could even climb up a few rows and look out over the city (look close, you can see the Empire State building)

It was a chilly night, but the talent was hot! We witnessed Taylor Dent serve up two 145mph aces against Andy Murray only to lose in straight sets. Dent's often reckless but aggressive style of play was very fun to watch. The women posted a much closer match when "the girl in white" came back to win the match after facing 5 or more match points to put away the third set 6 to zero! The matches ran until about 11:30 pm, when we then headed back into Manhattan for some late night fun and we eventually got to sleep.

As far as the Grand Slam tennis tournaments go 1 down.... 3 to go! France, Australia, and England, here I come!

New York II

Over the long weekend, I returned to the Big Apple for another short visit. This time, Dave (my brother) and I headed down for a match at the US Open. Since we were making the trip anyways, we decided to spend a little extra time in the city so that I can continue my sight seeing adventures. Dave has been to New York more than 10 times now, so he was a great tour guide as we hiked through the concrete jungle.

Our bus arrived near the original Macy's, which Dave immediately insisted that we visit... not for shopping but for the original wooden escalators still in use.

These were much cooler than anything else I saw in the store! Even the steps were made of wood!

We then proceed to our hotel, and the headed around town before the match. Some of our stops included:

Rockafeller Center

The Chrysler Building (look how tall I am!)

Radio City Music Hall (back to being short)

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Grand Central Terminal

And the Empire State Building

This trip filled in the New York City sight seeing gaps left by the last trip! It was great to see the famous and historic places!

Next Blog: The US OPEN!

The Famous Dome

Every college has an iconic building or structure that symbolizes the college. My alma mater, Purdue, has the engineering fountain or the bell tower which carry stories, memories, and even fables to last a lifetime. Some say the fountain cools the school's nuclear reactor or particle accelerator found below the engineering mall or that if a student walks under the bell tower he/she will not graduate in 4 years. I'll never forget the fountain runs through the engineering fountain or sitting near the bell tower napping before my next class.

At MIT, the iconic building is Building 10. Yes, that's it... building number 10. No specific name, only that it is part of the Maclaurin buildings. Although the building name may not resonate with those less familiar with the campus, the building image typically does.

Like anyone with a sense of curiosity, I wanted to know what was in the dome! The first few weeks of school, I headed over there to find out. I was surprised to discover that a library resides in the dome! The dome itself is a large reading room. However, at the time it was under construction for repairs. Shortly after my visit, the outside of the dome has been covered by scaffolding and looks like a giant cylinder instead of a dome.

I recently ventured back to the dome, despite it's cylindrical construction appearance, to see if the interior work was done. Sure enough it was, and here is the reading room that I found.

Looking up:

Panning down just a little:
Looking straight ahead:

For everyone who has wondered what was inside the Building 10 dome, you can now sleep better knowing that it is a beautiful, large reading room. My only thought it that the room is awfully big for how few people it can truly accommodate at any one time. I guess that's the price of beauty. We'll see how crowded it gets when classes start on wednesday.

Cousin in Boston

On thursday, I was lucky enough to meet up with my cousin Andrea who was passing through the city on business with two of her co-workers.

We had quite a crew gather for dinner in the north end - brother Dave and sister-in-law Rebecca, cousin Andrea and her co-workers Jackie and Chad, and myself! Andrea and her coworkers had never been to Boston before so after a delicious italian dinner Dave and Rebecca led us on a walking tour of the area.

We saw Paul Revere's house, the statue of Paul in the Paul Revere Mall (pictured below), and the famous North Church (also pictured below) where lanterns were placed signaling the Redcoats are coming. As you may recall, the code for the lantern signal was "one if by land, two if by sea".

We then proceeded into the downtown area of boston by the old state house (pictured below in the foreground), one of the few British built buildings left in the city. I was surprised to find out, that the lowest level of this historic building serves as the entrance to the subway!

We also stopped by Faneuil Hall for a photo opportunity!
At this point, Dave and Rebecca headed home, and I took Andrea and her co-workers to Harvard Sqaure for some drinks! A great evening with family and new friends!

The Sloanies are Coming!

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!