Harvard Orientation Week

Alright, I have to admit that I have been holding back details about my experiences at Harvard. This will be the first of hopefully many more blogs to come, about what school is like for me as a Grad Student. Also, they are big on abbreviations here, so when I type HGSE, it means Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Harvard’s Orientation Week

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! It was a week and a half long and there are plenty of highlights that would probably go one for about a chapter of a book. So I will try and be brief:

The HGSE BBQ: Catered food, open bar, dance floor, DJ and faculty and staff including the DEAN of our Graduate School getting down to the Black Eyed Peas’, “I Gotta Feelin” as well as Elvis Crespo’s “Suavemente”.

Open Bar at HGSE Welcome BBQ

Tent angle of HGSE BBQ

Free Swag: Orientation typically consisted of day long events. We recieved bagged lunches… and not the typical brown bags we would get in elementary school, but shimmery paper totes adorned with tissue paper that fed us gourmet “wraps” instead of sandwiches. Also, I got a canvas bag, nalgene bottle and name tags… Okay, not that much free stuff, but still, Harvard Swag. I’ll take it!

Bagged Lunch

My Cohort enjoying lunch in the Rose Garden

Harvard swag overflowing my purse

Course Shopping: On Thursday and Friday of orientation, we were able to “shop” for classes. All of the faculty at Harvard’s School of Ed. conducted 40 minute mini lectures to give students a taste of their teaching styles and introduction to their fall courses. Many professors here are famous: whether they’ve invented something, written books, or studied under Piaget himself…this is a chance to see them in action--even if you choose to not take their course.

Meeting My Advisor: Katherine Masyn. She’s cool (in the sense that she has piercing and tattoos and actually wants to hear about you). She taught at UC Davis before coming here and has gone through three PhD programs. She received her PhD in Advanced Quantitative Methods in Social Research. HUH? Yeah that was my reaction too! But then I read this: Masyn Interview, which made me feel less intimidated. I met with her to plan out my yearlong goals, get career advice and plan my fall semester courses. I even decided to take her Statistics Course: Intro to Data Analysis (the hardest intro to statistics course offered here). I figured that if I have to learn this stuff, I might as well learn from the best right?

Internship Fair: The last day of orientation consisted of walking around a conference center with tables full of various organizations and employers for an afternoon. These organizations were there to offer HSGE students internships and plant some seeds about job opportunities for when we graduate. They asked us to dress professionally and to bring plenty of copies of our resume as odds were we would be hired on the spot. YES on the spot! Never had I imagined they could make this process so easy. So I put on a dress, brought a folder of about 8 resumes (granted at this point I did not want a job or an internship) and I attended. I was offered 4 paid internships! Yes, 4! (Sigma shout out here). As I walked around, employers or recruiters asked me about myself and my past work experience. I actually caught myself saying, “I’m sorry, this is not what I am interested in,” – a couple of times. Yes, I turned down some job offers. Each visit at a table was like a quick 10 minute interview. If they liked me, they asked for my resume and contact info. And, if we werent a match, we would part ways amicably. There were well over 100 other tables in the room anyway. Being a researcher in training, I had to ask people in my cohort whether their experience was similar to mine. And YES it was--except for that fact that a couple of them got internship offers and even exchanged work schedules!

The opportunities are abundant here. That is what people keep saying. My advisor even told me that in essence, this is what I am really paying for-- some class access and education, but really it comes down to the networking and connections HGSE can offer you.

Stay tune to read about which job I pursued…

Mom and I on HGSE campus last month