Application Time

I've gotten several comments recently concerning the application and interview process for LGO. I'm re-re-posting my blogs from two years ago, when I wrote epically long narratives about the application process. If you have any questions that these posts don't answer - you are over-thinking it. :) Good luck to all who are interviewing!

Why LGO?

Taking the GMAT

Getting Recommendations

Writing the Essays

Crafting a Resume

Rocking the Interview


**As a disclaimer, please remember I am NOT on the admission board, so these are just my personal views about what I did when I was applying to the program!

New job, new city, new year

Well…. It’s been a really, really long time since my last post. And, actually a ton has happened.

In a completely unexpected twist of fate, I left Genzyme over the summer and began working at Lilly. I actually loved working at Genzyme, as well as living in Boston, but sometimes life happens and things don’t go as planned. As it was, I needed to move back to Indy for some family reasons, so I regretfully left my amazing team at Genzyme. I heard they are still rejoicing as we speak.

On the flipside, I am now doing a really unexpected, fascinating role at Eli Lilly and Co in Indianapolis, IN. I took a role in payer marketing… yes, really. So, you might say, this does not sound like an ops job, and you’d be right. Basically, I work as a consultant supporting contracting with healthcare payers (ie, insurance companies). My focus is implementing profitable access of Lilly’s drugs across my region…. The idea is that I work with brand teams, legal, government pricing, and account management groups to create and execute deals that will allow patients to have access to Lilly drugs, and will make the company some cash. I work across all Lilly drugs, and I’m really excited to be supporting our entire product line.

So, I work in marketing with a bunch of former sales reps. I’m the only engineer. I haven’t (and won’t) set foot in a plant since I’ve been in this role. However, I’m still using the LGO education. I’m also working to instill some operational and process-based thinking to a group that has historically been fairly siloed, with few norms, processes, or operating procedures. In 2012, my focus will be improving our internal processes in order to allow our group to be faster and more flexible in responding to our customers. It’s a really cool, unique opportunity, and although it may not be traditional ops, I’m certain that I’m going to be able to contribute to my team with my LGO education.

Let’s see, in other news, I turned 30. I celebrated in Vegas with a bunch of friends and LGOs. I was sunburnt and hungover and it was amazing. Next up… an impromptu LGO reunion in FL for Hector’s wedding.

I also relocated to Indy. I miss Boston terribly, but as I look around my amazing downtown 2-bdrm condo, with garage, and private porch, that I own for much, much less than my rent in Boston, I don’t miss it that much : )

A Little LGO Love

Admissions season is upon us. For potential applicants, it's a stressful time of collecting recommendations, writing essays, and prepping for interviews. For me, it's a time of reliving my glory days in LGO on alumni panels and grabbing free dinners in E51.

One of the major perks of staying local in Cambridge is the ability to head back to MIT for alumni events. Last week, I was invited to participate as the token LGO on an alumni panel for women applying to LGO. I met several other Sloan alums from '04 and '06, and met a bunch of potential Sloan applicants, and event a few ambitious young women who were thinking about joining LGO. I also scored an awesome Sloan pen. After the event, I was able to drop by the Sloan Octoberfest celebration on the plaza in front of the new Sloan building. Octoberfest featured six (yes, six!) different beers on tap, as well as hot pretzels and Paul Buckley in lederhosen; it was pretty close to heaven on earth. It was also the first time that I've been able to check out the new Sloan building, which is totally sick. The opening of the Sloan building this year is actually the second time in my academic life when a gigantic, fabulous, super-gorgeous building for my major is opened the year after I graduated (the first being when Purdue opened a $60M new CheE complex the year after I graduated undergrad). Sigh. I'm apparently not destined to take lectures in shiny new buildings.

Yesterday, I was able to participate on an alumni panel for the LGO Ambassador Day, a day-long event aimed at showing off the LGO program to potential applicants. Participants are able to spend the entire day with current LGO students, attending classes and going to current student panels. In the evening, Sloan Dean Joanne Yeats and LGO Director Don Rosenfield spoke about the LGO program, which was followed by an alumni panel. For me, it was a great opportunity to catch up with Don and the other LGO faculty and staff, as well as some of our LGO and Sloan professors who were also in attendance. I'm always surprised that the continue to ask me to do these panels; yesterday, when I was asked to described the difficulty of the summer semester, I eloquently described it as being "not exactly puppies and rainbows and cupcakes." Despite my inability to sound like a grown-up at these things, I'm thrilled to do them; I love meeting the prospective students and learning more about their backgrounds and experiences, and what they hope to do with an LGO degree in the future. I met a bunch of really engaging, dynamic potential applicants yesterday, and I have no doubt that the class of 2013 will be amazing. I also met a handful of potential applicants who actually read my blog, including one who admitted to feeling as though they "creepily knew me".... AWESOME!

I would definitely encourage anyone interested in an ops to come to campus for an LGO Ambassador Visit to feel the LGO love first-hand. Ambassador Visits are a great way to get a true feel for what being an LGO student is like by taking an actual class, talking to current students, and meeting the LGO faculty... all before final applications are due on Dec 15.

As always, if you have any questions about my experience with the LGO program or application process, feel free to leave me a comment!

New Wheels

So, when I moved to Boston to start LGO, I sold my beloved car. Now, as a bit of a background…. I’m from Indiana, home of the Indy 500. I’ve always loved everything about cars, especially the joy of driving them, preferably fast. I love to watch all forms of car-racing (although I have a particular fondness for open-wheel racing), and I’ve even worked on a go-kart pit crew for fun. I’m the girl who can tell you the difference between CART and IRL and why it matters, and then change your headlight.

So, when I moved to Boston in 2008, it broke my heart to sell my car (Infiniti G35, rear-wheel drive, sports package, awesome) and adapt myself to public transit. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love to take the T; I love saving the money, never having scrape snow off my car, and not having to worry about who's going to be DD. However, when I started work, I realized I needed a car to get back and forth to our Framingham site, which gave me the perfect excuse to re-join the ranks of gas-guzzling, environment-killing car drivers.

After what had to have been the most annoying car purchasing process on the planet (thank you, State of Massachusetts’ insane-o insurance and inspection laws), I am now the proud owner of a 2004 Saab 9-3. Black exterior, grey interior. Manual turbo 2.0L. It’s freaking awesome. Ok, it’s actually not that awesome, it’s sort of a mom car, especially compared to my last car. But… it allows me complete freedom to take a weekend trip to NYC without getting stuck in the Chinatown bus. It allows me to stop by Trader Joe’s on the weekend, without having to lug my groceries on the bus. And it allows me to practice my Click and Clack gas-less clutching technique. It’s not all good… I have gotten pulled over twice already on the Pike - but no tickets yet!

My new car looks like this…

Love / Hate Relationship

There are some really great things about transitioning back to full-time work, and some pretty terrible rude awakenings. Here's my "Top 10 Things I Love and Hate About Working Full-Time."

5 Things I Love About Working Full-Time

1. The Paycheck. Um, duh. For the first time in the two years I've lived in Boston, I actually have the money to go out and enjoy the city.
2. The Schedule. I work a pretty reasonable schedule; generally, it’s pretty close to an 8-5 job. The amazing part is once the work day is over, so is the work. Instead of going home to work on problem sets before heading out for an evening group meeting, I can just do whatever the heck I want… go to the gym, have happy hour cocktails with friends, watch 4 consecutive hours of Law & Order on the couch– its all up to me. And that’s beautiful.
3. The Work. The work in B-school is interesting, but you do much of it knowing your recommendations will never be implemented, and that no actual positive (or negative) outcomes will occur because of your work. Now, it’s different; my work gets used to make actual decisions, which will in some way affect actual patients, and that is huge. I’m certainly more passionate about what I’m working on now than when I was, say, struggling through a Finance problem set.
4. The Office. I have an office. Like, with a door. And its all for me. Just me! It’s amazing. My last desk at work back in Indy was a cube out on the production floor in a room which had formerly been a men’s restroom. My cube even had a shower drain in it. So, my new fancy digs are a definite step-up. Also, we get free coffee and tea, and its sort of amazing.
5. The Product. Genzyme focuses on providing life-saving therapies for rare disorders, most of which have no other treatments. It is fascinating to learn about the products and the patients. In business school, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy learning about how Coca-Cola managed to steal business from Pepsi… well, no, I didn’t really enjoy it. I’m so insanely in love with the healthcare industry that it was hard for me to focus so much of my time in B-school on other industries. Now that I’m back in pharma, I’m able to devote all of my time on the industry that I love.

5 Things I Hate About Working Full-Time

6. The Commute. When I’m out in Framingham, the commute back can take upwards of an hour on the Pike. Additionally, the little habits I picked up in Italy (tailgating, flashing my brights at slow drivers, madly gesturing with my hands) seem to be less accepted in MA than Tuscany. Sigh.
   
7. The Meetings. Like every job in corporate America, my job features occasional meetings which could be more productive, leaving me watching the clock until I can get back to doing something more value-added. Like checking my email.
8. The Structure. There are good and bad things about working a steady job, like the fact that it’s steady. Gone are the month-long semester breaks, where I lounged and traveled and basically did whatever I wanted. Now, I’m tied to actually showing up each week for work. Bummer.
9. The Fear. Some of the things I love about my job also scare me to death. I love the fact that what I do affords me the opportunity to lead and influence decisions that will impact patients’ lives; and it also scares me to death. I feel blessed to have found such a rewarding job, particularly in this ailing economy, and I’m terrified that I won’t live up to expectations, either my employer’s or my own. In our LGO leadership class, our instructor Jan Klein discussed this extremely common MBA fear with us, and let us know that it’s a fear that nearly all graduating MBAs possess. She coached us to remember that we are impressive people, and to remember not to let fear prevent us from taking the intelligent risks we will need to take in order to be successful. I suppose this fear isn’t really just a bad thing; I’ve always wanted a role where I could be impactful, and now I have the opportunity to have it - and that’s pretty awesome. Anyhow, now that this blog has digressed to reading like Chicken Soup for the Soul, I'll move on to the final item on my list....
10. The Alarm. In order to work out, shower, and get to work on time, my alarm goes off at around 6am… that's somewhere between 6-8 hours before I generally got up in b-school. Ouch!

all in a day's work

I recently had some happy hour drinks with LGO alum Jeremy Pitts, who mentioned that he had recently received a Twitter about my blog. Apparently, the LGO recruiting and admissions staff has found that social media such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook are becoming more and more useful to communicate info about the LGO program to prospective students. Sadly, the conversation made me realize that I’ve been sorely neglecting my blog these last few months. My blog started as a strictly LGO blog, intended to capture my experiences as a student. Now that I’ve graduated, I’ve struggled with exactly what to do with it…. re-vamp it into a blog about post-LGO life? Delete it? Devote the content entirely to bad pirate jokes? It has been an interesting internal debate. However, I’ve decided to continue writing about my next step in my personal journey; the step from full-time student to full-time employee. I’m hoping to capture my experience in actually implementing the skills learned in LGO out in the working world. And hopefully at least a few of you care enough to continue reading…

Anyhow, it is now mid-September, and I’ve been working full-time at Genzyme for almost four months. Sadly, I can’t tell you about the exact specifics of what I’m doing at work (confidentiality agreement and all that jazz), but I can give you the general gist of things. I’m working as a Lean Leader in a corporate Lean/Operational Excellence group. There are five of us, and it’s an awesome group. The group also includes another LGO alum, a Sloanie, as well as some folks with a ton of lean/op-ex experience. The guys are super-duper-smart, and they also happen to be a ton of fun. They work very collaboratively; I get tons of advice and support from everyone in my group, which is honestly very different from any of my previous work teams.

As for my project, I’m currently working on helping improve some of the quality systems and processes, working to shorten documentation cycle-times and decrease errors. The end-goal is to safely, quickly and efficiently provide our patients with the high-quality medications they expect and deserve. If you read my blog much, you might realize that it sounds a whole lot like my internship project… because it is. So, while it may have seemed like I was spending seven months gallivanting around Italy, drinking wine and eating gelato, I’ve also recently learned that I was also developing some very key skills that are now helping me out in my full-time role.

Anyhow, more to come on the trials and tribulations of re-entering the workforce in future posts; as for right now, I’m off to Hong Kong to celebrate current LGO student Kacey Fetcho’s 30^th birthday... whoo-hoo!

The End

LGO is officially over. On a bright, sunny, obnoxiously hot and humid day about two weeks ago, I was miraculously handed two (yes, two!) shiny new MIT degrees and sent on my merry way into the land of getting up before noon, wearing a wardrobe that doesn't predominately feature sweatpants, and basically having to grow up.

Graduation Day was perfect. It was a gorgeous day, and it was great to spend the day with all my friends and their families. My own family was not able to attend as my mom's not currently able to travel; however, my family was definitely with me in spirit. After graduation, we had an LGO picnic, where Don made a classically Don speech about LGO product always shipping on time regardless of the quality. OK, for the record, Don Rosenfield is adorable. After the picnic, the LGOs headed out on the town for one last hurrah before scattering across the country and globe post-graduation. I can't recall the specifics, but pictures I found on my camera the next day indicated we really had a great time.

Now I'm working full-time here in Boston at Genzyme, and I love it. Its different, its challenging, its totally not what I expected, but its always interesting and I really, really like it. I feel like I definitely made the right choice. However, that doesn't mean I don't already miss LGO.

So, the only question left is... what to do with my blog? I suppose that MIT will pull it down off their admissions site to direct traffic towards current students, who will have more current and relevant ramblings (although I stand by my Chuck Norris and Bengals posts as being completely critical to fully understanding the MBA application process). My question to you is this... would anyone keep reading this if I kept writing? Hmmmm. I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks to all who've read my blog these past two years; I do truly hope I've provided some helpful information. Last but not least, thanks to the entire LGO Class of 2010. You guys are hands-down the brightest, most fun bunch of people I've ever known, and its been a joy and an honor to work and play with you these past two years. Best of luck in all you guys go on to do in the future; I have complete faith it will be nothing but big, big things.

XOXO
b