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!

Hello MIT MBA Class of 2011

Tonight I met a very large portion of the MIT MBA Class of 2011 at a pre-orientation Barbeque! As an LGO student, my classmates and I make up a subset of the MBA program. We had all summer to bond and now we have been released into the larger pool of MBA students, most of whom have just arrived in the Boston area and are very excited to be here.

The food was great and the company was better! New faces, new personalities, and new background experience. There was plenty to talk about! I'm looking forward to the semester even more now that I have met some classmates!

Success!

Success presents itself in many ways. Here is my most recent evidence of success... the luggage check tag on the cornhole set as it sits in my apartment in Cambridge, MA.

Sitting at the Gate

The cornhole transportation adventure continues:

I'm currently sitting at my waiting to depart for Boston. During check-in, the boards were under close scrutiny by the airline agent. The official weigh in put them at 52lbs and 70 inches in total length (length + width + height). Both metrics put the boards in the oversized luggage category which requires a $100 fee. At this point, I was certain the boards were going back my parents house. I had my dad circling outside in case I couldn't check them. But then I realized... I had come this far with the work and effort put in to getting these boards to Boston, I wasn't about to give up.

With a little coaxing, mentioning that I'm a (poor) college student, and some story telling about how Boston doesn't know what cornhole is and how I'm gearing up for football season (there might have been a little exaggeration). The breaking point was when I mentioned that I can check a snowboard for free and that was much bigger than these boards. He said "well that's sporting equipment" to which I replied "so is this!!!". I knew he had a soft spot for the game when he said "your are right, it is sporting equipment". He then muttered "go ahead and throw them up here, just don't tell anyone!"

SUCCESS!!!!

Now I can only hope that they make it in one piece.

Goodbye Indiana... for now! Hello Boston and FOOTBALL!

Traveling Corn Hole

I'm currently in the process of packing. I take that back, I'm in the process of procrastinating so that I don't pack. Quite frankly, I'm not ready to go back. I'm here in Indiana with friends, family, no homework, and no real work. The weather has been beautiful! 70-80 degrees, sunny and relatively low humidity. It really doesn't get much better. The hardest part of my day is dragging myself out of bed when I know that I really don't HAVE to get up. I'm sure you don't feel sorry for me, but after the intensity of the end of last semester, I think I deserve a little break.

There is one part of packing that was very exciting! I have decided that with football season coming up, I need to take my favorite tailgate game back to the Boston area.... the game of cornhole (or "bags" if you are uppity and refuse recognize the fact that you are trying to throw a bag of corn through a hole in a board). This is a game you can't step foot on a midwest college campus without seeing, and I've only witnessed one game out east. Get ready Boston!

So here's the "exciting" part (remember, I'm a nerd). I'm going to attempt to get a set of boards checked onto my flight tomorrow. My first concern was weight. I checked online and found the weight limit to be 50 lbs and the size limit to be 60inch. The boards are 48 inches tall so I should be good there, but they are solidly built (like any cornhole set should be) with 3/4 inch plywood. I went to fed-ex/kinkos to check the weight because we don't have a scale in our house and found them to weight 48.75 lb., pre modification. I think I'm close enough that it should slide through the checking process.

But before it's ready to fly, some modifications are necessary to make sure the boards survive not only the plane trip, but the subway rides and walks back to my apartment. That's right, I have to hand carry this all the way from the airport to my apartment along with my other luggage, but that's what wheels are for. I added 2 wheels and some handles to pull the boards behind me like a roll-a-board suitcase. To ensure that the playing surface would stay consistent I added plastic corners for protection. My final touch was a handle on the side in case a baggage handler needed an extra grips. The results are as follows:

2 Wheels for quick and easy maneuvering
3 Handles positioned to maximize comfort and flexibility during transport.
Plastic corners to preserve a consistent playing surface from edge to edge.

And one happy football fan ready to drag these boards over 1000 miles to their new home.

Transportation tomorrow will consist of a car ride to the airport, a plane to boston, a bus to the red subway line, the red subway line to central square, with a final walk of just over a quarter of a mile. The only thing stopping me at this point are the US Airway ticket agents and their leniency of the 50 lb. luggage rule.

Who Goes to Work!

As I mentioned, I'm currently home... during the week... and everyone else is either at work or school. So what do I do? Go to where I used to work! I worked at Klipsch, a world class speaker company (did I ever mention that I LOVE speakers). For those who wonder, in my opinion, Klipsch makes some of the best speakers in the world... even better than Bose for you non-audio enthusiasts! They also have a outstanding customer loyalty and a huge fan base.

Much of the work that I did at Klipsch involved the headphones and some of the subwoofers. As an audio enthusiast, the job was a dream come true, so naturally I will gravitate back whenever I can. Which brings me to the new front entrance display:

Once again... did I mention that I love speakers?

Here is the latest marketing material for the newest headphone release, the Image S4i and Image S2m. I was lucky enough to work on these projects JUST before leaving for school!

And here is the new entrance to the engineering/marketing area. Our machine shop guru, Jay, made the rusted steel logos hanging from the ceiling. I really like the shadows on the walls.

Once again, another good day in the motherland. It was great to see all of you Klipschies! Take care until next time!

Questions? Just ask!

For those of you who are reading this blog and have any questions regarding the MIT LGO program, living in Boston, or anything else, feel free to leave a comment on a post or email me at bgeswein@mit.edu. I am more than happy to answer your questions.

By the way... I know you are out there!

Home Sweet Home

I'm home. It's nice. Very nice. Although once again, when I leave for college my parents decide to change "my room". This time, the bunk beds are gone. My brother and I have always shared a room, thus the need for bunk beds. My dad built these bunk beds when I was about 4 and I've been sleeping on them since. I remember when I was about 6 year olds telling him that one day I would be too tall to fit on the bunk beds... guess what... I was WRONG!

Anyways, it is nice to wake up at my parents house, look out the kitchen window and see GREEN. It is quite a change from the red brick, grey concrete, and black asphalt that surrounds me in Cambridge, not that Cambridge is ugly, this is just beautiful. See what I mean!

My dad loves his trees and my mom loves her flowers. It works!

I also had the opportunity to visit my grandparents in New Albany, Indiana on my way to Nashville Tennessee for a weekend with my good college buddies. With my grandparents busy social schedules, I was lucky to get all three of them (two on dad's side, one on moms side) together mid day on friday.

We enjoyed a home made chili lunch at my dad's parents house, followed by a tour of their bustling garden and a viewing of my pictures from a summer in Boston. I then sat down at the their computer for a quick computer lesson. Ever since they got a computer we have had the tradition of giving them a lesson with each visit. This visit's lesson... blogging and Pandora. Trust me, it was good... right Grandma?

I then went with my mom's mom to the new New Albany YMCA where she has started a rigorous workout program. Hopefully, the next visit we'll have time to go back so I can try the climbing wall... it was HUGE!!!

Here are my grandparents (from L to R, Grandma Sadtler, Grandma Geswein and Grandpa Geswein) in front of the tall sunflowers in the garden. The tallest flower measures 7.25 feet. Quite impressive!

It was really good to see them and I really appreciate their accommodations to my tight schedule. So far, 4 days into my visit, I have found time to see Indy friends, college friends, grandparents, neighbors, aunts and uncles on mom's side, and my immediate family. I just have work friends and hopefully more Indy friends to go before I return to Boston! Once again, a little planning goes a LONG way!

End of Summer Classes... applause

Classes are over! I'm back home in Indiana, looking ahead at roughly 2.5 weeks of no homework with a huge smile on my face!

Looking back at the end of the semester, most classes did not culminate with a final exam. Instead there were large projects that took the place of the more traditional exam. With this structure, the last meeting for each class was a lecture with closing remarks instead of an exam where individual walk out silently when they are finished. These closing remarks from the professor always automatically stimulated applause from the class. I remember sitting there thinking "wow, I have never ended a class with applause". It felt natural yet strange at the same time. This habit/desire continued as each class came to a close.

Despite the structure, I believe that much of the applause came from the true appreciation from individual students to the professors and TA's. I've never been in grad school before, so I can only compare it to undergrad, but the teacher/TA to student relationship is vastly different. For example, we typically address professors by their first names (at least the ones so far). The TA's go out of their way to help us out, and even join us on the weekends for social activities. It's a very collaborative, real-world work-like environment that makes learning easy and enjoyable.

Now, with the semester under my belt, I look forward to the fall where we LGO students will have the opportunities to branch out and meet the rest of the MIT Sloan MBA Class of 2011!