Fall 22 Recap

I’ve been in the US for four months now as an international student. Everything I’ve done over the past four months is documented in this blog.

Sep 2022

Began my master's degree. Decided to study Probability and Statistics along with Operations Research. These two courses were my core requirements and I was unhappy that I was supposed to study a course (Probability and Statistics) that I already had taken in my undergrads and a course (Operations Research) that I assumed was not important for my career in product management. Fast forward to now, I understand why these courses were important to building my foundations of general engineering.

For example, Operations Research (OR) is a discipline that deals with the development and application of mathematical and analytical methods to help make better decisions. Basically optimizing your decisions.

If you can understand this picture then you can pretty much understand Operations Research

By end of this course, I was finally able to grasp the fact that product managers can utilize this knowledge to help make better decisions about how to design, develop, and manage a product. Here’s how:

1. OR can be used to optimize the allocation of the team’s time and other resources to maximize the impact of a product.
2. OR can be used to develop efficient plans for producing and distributing the product, taking into account factors such as demand, capacity, and costs.
3. OR can be used to optimize the inventory levels to balance the cost of holding inventory
4. OR can be used to develop and implement quality control processes to ensure that the product meets the required standards

Whereas Probability and Statistics can be used to:

1. Analyze data about the product, such as customer usage patterns, performance data, and market trends. This can help in identifying improvements to be made to the product and making more informed decisions.
2. Design and analyze A/B tests to compare different versions of the product and determine which one is more effective.
3. Make predictions about future demand for the product, which can be helpful in planning ahead and making better decisions about production and inventory management.

Overall, a strong foundation in these courses can help me (a future PM) make more data-driven decisions.

September was all about learning to fit in a completely new country and focusing on student life. Attending college events, fairs, and exploring Boston.

Some goodies that I won during Fall Fest 2022.

Oct 2022

October was probably the most exciting month of my semester. Since I had only two classes, I was mostly free the rest of the time. I wanted to do something and decided to join a few clubs and associations at the university and also do something that I really like i.e meet new people.

HackHarvard 2022 Day 0

In the second week of October, I attended HackHarvard. This was my first ever in-person hackathon in the US and the entire weekend was full of learning and experiences. It involved three days of non-stop coding, creating a project with little sleep, interacting with other hackers from around the world, and networking with mentors from sponsored companies including Meta, Google, Pi Network, Deso, Sonr, and others.

I got this wonderful opportunity to work on a really exciting project with complete strangers. My teammates were computer science undergrads from Mexico and Spain. I myself being a computer science undergraduate student and also from coming from another country, we all got along really well. It was fun to work with them and get new perspectives. They were also very curious to learn about my experience of working in the tech industry. Eventually, we built and submitted a project. Although we didn’t win I’m glad folks at Pi Network liked our idea and encouraged us to work further on it. We also go this amazing opportunity to continue working on our project under their Summer fellowship.

To all the nerds reading this, here’s the Devpost link to my project. Feedback is appreciated :)

Stake the Stigma

I didn’t merely work there, of course. I barged into a party with my teammates and some new Harvard pals. It was a Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity party. I never would have dreamed that I would attend a Harvard fraternity party one day. However, I did, and it was a singular experience.

The final week of October was devoted entirely to studying for midterm tests. It ended with the most exciting celebrations of the year i.e Diwali (an Indian festival celebrating joy and light) and Halloween.

To be continued in part two. Click below

https://medium.com/@sunainamahindrakar/fall-22-recap-part-2-4fb8885788e5