Recruiting: A Grad Student's Worst Nightmare

An unfortunate part of our looming graduation date is securing employment.  I headed back to Boston for just that one week in November.  Though my days were filled with preparing, interviewing, company receptions, and running between the two events, it was good to be back.  Plus I’m now in the fortunate position to be on the other side of the table and interview the companies to see which offer is the best fit.  Come June 3^rd (well if I get this thesis signed off on), we will need to swap the lectures, tour of the world, and themed parties for responsibility and a paycheck.

However June isn’t here yet and I still managed to have a good time despite the ten hour interviews. My LGO team took one evening off of all things recruiting and had a reunion dinner at our favorite sushi joint.  Teammate Steve and his wife had a baby over the summer and this was my first time seeing the little guy. 

 

Newsteam

I was fortunate to fly in Halloween day and got to participate in the MIT Halloween parties.  What a grand opportunity to break out a German dirndl.  My co-workers told me that only small children participate in Halloween in Switzerland and found my description of American Halloween hilarious. 

 

LGO's celebrate Halloween

I also was in town for a fabled MIT tradition - Fall Ball which is a cross between prom and a high-end wedding.  Since all my stuff was in a suburban storage locker, I dressed up in a pal’s finest and danced the night away at the Fairmont Copley downtown.

Ladies at Fall Ball

Back to Boston

I just returned from a week in Boston from the mid-way point of the internship.  It was fantastic being back in Boston even though every day was scheduled from 8AM to 10PM with lectures, presentations, meetings, and company smoozing.  I flew in just in time to celebrate the birthdays of two of my favorite MITers.  I may have nearly fallen asleep on their floor from jet lag but managed to stay up to sing happy birthday and partake in cake.  The picture below shows our fantastic group of gals in warmer weather.

My favorite Sloan gals in Rockport

I fit in my other of my favorite Boston people and activities even though the encounters were often too brief and at odd hours.  These included running along the Charles with Karla & Dannielle, walks with Avi & Catherine, shopping with Tara, dinner in Beacon Hill with Emily & Nimisha, drinks with Derek, the Miracle of Science with the Getaway Gals, Border Café with Shaun, pancakes with Julia, coffee with Kelly, and running & brunch with Jeff, Joan, & Brian.  Thanks for your flexibility guys!  I was also able to go on a school camping trip Friday night before flying back to Basel on Saturday which was a great time. 

A small smattering of LGO campers

Another good point of the trip was discovering that I’m on track to graduate this spring.  Not that I was  worried but it was still nice to hear.  Wow I can’t believe my expat days are rapidly drawing to a close … or are they?  Our trip to MIT also marked the beginning of recruiting season.  I’m in the exploratory phase however I’ve really enjoyed living in Boston and will definitely be including overseas opportunities in my search.  Don’t worry Mom, my top two target cities are Boston & DC (Clarke – start mounting your campaign now).

Vienna

Another weekend, another pilgrimage to a famous European city.  A few weekends ago, the destination was Vienna.  MITers flew in from all over Europe and Clarke prepared himself for “a very nerdy weekend”.  

Vienna crew in front of one of the many royal palaces

Ahem Clarke we only made a few Schrödinger jokes and just thought briefly of visiting his grave several hours outside Vienna.  For my non-science loving readers, Schrödinger is a famous Austrian quantum physicist and we encounter t-shirts like this on a daily basis at MIT.  Clarke and I got in before everybody else and had a chance to explore the old town Friday evening.  What a beautiful city!  As is the family traveling tradition, we wandered around aimlessly, following both the melodious strands of street musicians and the distant glow of a palace displayed in its finest evening splendor.   

Vienna has a plethora of picturesque statues and fountains

Karla, our resident LGO tour guide, had a slew of sites for us to hit on Saturday.  We walked through Hofburg Palace, Rauthaus, St Peterskirche cathedral, Stephansdom cathedral, and the astonishing painted ceilings of Karlskirche which may have been my favorite site of the day.  The church set up scaffolding so visitors could walk up to the top of the dome to see the collages from a few feet instead of several hundred.  Since middle school art was a challenge for me, I looked at the painted ceilings with pure wonder. 

Karlskirche ceiling

My classmate Kacey brought her husband and their two year old son Nolan which certainly added a foreign element to the trip for a bunch of twenty & thirty -something unmarried people.  Nolan's a gregarious, sweet kid and Clarke and I both had fun chasing him around to tire him out and give his parents a well-deserved break.  I think Clarke made a friend for life.

Clarke and Nolan

Sunday we journeyed out to Vienna’s number one tourist attraction Schönbrunn Palace which is the former imperial summer residence of the Habsburg.  Wow beyond the impressive physical palace, the estate has a gloriette, roman runins, hedge maze, large zoo, a litany of sculptures, and the most impressive gardens I’ve visited in memory.  You could easily spend all day on the palace grounds and not see half of it.

Siblings in front of th palace

Not that we didn’t try!  I marveled at the imperial quarters, got a kick out of running around the maze trying to beat my friends (if only Donovan wasn’t 200+cm tall), trekked up the hill to the gloriette to see the palace aerially, and sipped a Viennese coffee at one of the cafes on grounds.  A fitting ending to another fun trip.

LGO ladies w/ city backdrop

An Outsider on the Inside

Though my blog topics may not reflect it, a fascinating component of life in Basel is going to work.  I’ll save the daily grind disparities for another post. In a marked departure from my old life where the majority of each day was spent firefighting, I don’t have any daily responsibilities in Basel.  Similar to consulting, I’m an outsider brought in to solve a specific problem.  Unlike historical consulting, I have a Novartis badge, boss, and team even though I technically work for an am ultimately responsible to MIT.  Lou Gerstner, former IBM CEO, lifted IBM from near bankruptcy to a perennial computing powerhouse by being an “outsider on the inside” which affords you a certain level of emotional detachment from the company’s challenges.  We interns clearly have big shoes to fill!

Novartis has a public, high-level strategic partnership with MIT that has bred a palpable reverence for the university amongst employees.  When my bespeckled, white-haired advisor visited earlier in the month, you would have thought the President had arrived.  Though I don’t carry Dr. Welsch’s level of clout, I’m still amazed that I get to spend my days learning through asking people of all levels intrusive questions in the name of research and sitting around brainstorming. 

However the MIT besottedness is not without its drawbacks.  I learned the hard way that people take my spoken stream of consciousness thoughts literally when they tried to immediately implement one of them.  Since then, I’ve learned to process thoughts silently and asked my team members to cease introducing me as the MIT guru. 

On a lighter note, just like work in Boston, I’ve found myself in the roles of English tutor and reigning generational explainer.  As the only native speaker on my Basel team of ten, I’m called upon to proof presentations and contracts, decipher foreign email correspondences, and explain colloquial expressions.  We had hilarious conversations last week about the difference between guinea pig and piggy bank and the real meaning of “that’s what she said”.  In addition, I’m the youngest by at least fifteen years and have tried to shed light on the differences between and uses of twitter, facebook, gchat, linkedin, etc. 

As much as things change across oceans, plenty of things remain the same J  

Where I work below ... more to come on the reason for beer and balloons 

MIT = Disney World?

It's certainly been a banner year for working my way through my bucket list.  MIT is my nerdy version of Disney World where dreams from tromping around Toyota City to meeting Bill Gates come true.

I found out yesterday that another dream may be fulfilled this fall.  My design team is a finalist in the National Design Awards sponsored by the Smithsonian. Wow, I don't know how we got nominated but I'm elated albeit shocked.  As my readers probably know, I was very disappointed to go out in the final round of the MIT 100K competition for our self-inflating bicycle tire invention and business (thanks again for everybody who so nicely took surveys to help me develop a marketing strategy) so this is a great chance for inventor's redemption.  Far and away the coolest part of the competition is the awards banquet at the White House in the fall presided over by the first couple.

For the techies out there, our product is below.

My team partnered with a non-profit to design and develop a cost-effective, robust solution for neonatal jaundice in developing countries.  Glad to see my days spent as a lightbulb engineer have come in handy.  Come on billibed!