While summer is quickly leaving, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on my past summer.
First and foremost, I took a fascinating Leadership course through Harvard. I think dad would have really loved this class. My professor loved looking to past leaders like Ben Franklin, Adam Smith, William Dafoe, etc. I noticed that leadership really hasn’t changed in all of the years that we have been living. These writers were able to break leadership down into its core components. The key take-a-ways from this class is that leadership requires great sacrifice and not everyone is built for it. Each person will need to decide how far they want to go into leadership before they stop the climb up the metaphoric ladder. I also recognized that the best leaders are self-aware of their strengths and weaknesses as well as the strengths and weaknesses of leaders in the world around us. I also took away a deeper understanding of the importance of branding and public relations to crafting a solid leadership portfolio. Lastly, the class’s group project involved us profiling a leader. I suggested Stan Lee and eventually, to my chagrin, the group decided to go with it. The reason I did not initially want to do the presentation on my chosen person is just that I did not want to lead the group. Overall, it went well though. I dressed up as Iron Man and did an interview as part of the presentation.
From my previous Harvard class, I learned about design thinking which gave me the skills to tackle any problem that I run into. In addition to that, I noticed an awesome occurrence whenever I discussed my learnings with my core group of co-workers. The best way to describe it is co-creation. Basically, by discussing these topics, they learn from me and I learn from them. The ideas expand on one another and bring both of us to a higher level of understanding. I wanted to experiment with this idea with a larger group. From the design thinking course, a book was recommended called Designing your Life. Essentially, it was about taking the ideas from design thinking and applying them to life. So I rounded up those people that I consider design thinkers to get them to discuss. Honestly, it was an awesome experience. Each week my Connor brain would make me nervous to moderate it, but each time I would get past that mental block and do it, I would feel super energized. The first time I did it, I was so energized I could not even sleep! This was such a great experience and I know that my future career will contain elements of what I learned from this sort of book club. I still have one more session that we need to do to finish strong. I should probably schedule that soon…
While making it halfway through my Harvard graduate certificate, I am planning the next steps to getting the MBA. After some frustration of prepping for the GMAT, taking the GMAT, and doing poorly on the GMAT, I applied to UF and USF. UF turned me down but said they would consider me for the Spring. I am still waiting on that decision. Hopefully, I will hear back this week! USF did not accept me but then I received an email from someone in admissions that said I just did not get accepted because of my GMAT score. They recommended that I appeal the decision and submit a waiver for the GMAT. Once I did, they instantly accepted me. Now, it makes sense why their GMAT average was higher than UF. That just made me frustrated that I stressed and spent the money to take the GMAT purely for them. UF and most other colleges were waiving the GMAT because of COVID. I am still a little salty about that and wonder if it will influence my decision at all. Either way, it is nice to know that I will be going back to school regardless of where.
At work, I was hand-picked by upper management to lead a project that gave me exposure to the whole business. It has been such a great experience so far and it challenges me to think more like a person running a business. I am pretty sure that I was chosen for this project because of the conversations I had with my leader about communication when I was doing my design thinking project. It was a bit of strategy that I went to my leader to discuss this, but it was also driven by genuine curiosity. Either way, this project takes me out of engineering in a good way to see the rest of the business. Because of this project, I had to drop one of the classes I was planning to take over the summer for Fall. I knew it would be just too much.
After a year’s hiatus on being directly involved with the interns, I was told that I would be in charge of the interns in a more official way. While this did not mean that they would directly report to me, it did mean that I was involved in picking the interns and oversaw their day-to-day. I am not sure if this experience made me excited to be a manager, but I did recognize a lot of differences with how I approached these interns as I did the last time. This time I was a lot more distant. Which, probably is not as great in developing a very lasting bond with the interns like I did last time, but it felt more managerial. I learned a lot from them both and I was excited to see both of them get offers. I just received an above and beyond award for it — most likely since it was not official to my experience. My boss was very kind to get testimonials from these interns:
“My internship experience has been better than I could’ve ever imagined, and I have Connor to thank for that. Connor is such a driven, intelligent and caring person and he always takes on more than seemingly possible. He truly cares about how everyone feels, how certain changes will affect others and how to balance everyone’s thoughts and ideas. PIUS is so lucky to have someone like Connor who anyone on any value stream can turn to and look to for guidance. I am so grateful to have met him, worked with him and learned from him, he has so much to offer.”
“Other than being an incredibly important asset to the engineering team, Connor showed throughout my internship his genuine care and interest in helping others. He went beyond his job description when he undertook the responsibility of the interns, and most certainly exceeded any expectations I had of a mentor when I began my internship. I, along with others who have interacted or worked with Connor, would most likely agree that Connor is respectably one of the most influential employees Mettler-Toledo has for his exemplar work ethic and impressive care for overall development and improvement. I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to work closely alongside him throughout the internship which I believe was much more valuable and memorable for me because of him.”
Overall, it was a great summer and I plan to take a lot of the lessons I learned from the summer to continue pushing myself in the fall!
