Bootcamp: the great appetizer of the MEng program

What did I learn in a week?

Laila Zouaki
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

So I started at Berkeley a week ago. While everyone was still in holiday mode, we started the year with what they call the Bootcamp: two courses, 8 days, 3 hours a day and zillions of PDF pages to read every day.

I had two classes. The first one was Organizational Behavior with Dan Himelstein, and R&D Management and Ethics with Lee Fleming, both of whom I presented in this article.

Two very different yet complementary classes. I truly enjoyed both.

R&D Management and Ethics

Lee’s class was in the form of case discussions. We had received a few directions on how to have an effective case study discussion, and we were pretty much dreading to be cold called on Day 1. But as we began the first class as a role play, it got us in the right mindset and there were always many hands up to participate.

  • I loved the way the case studies were written. I was expecting boring papers with a lot of theory. I could not have been more wrong: they were all presented in the form of short stories, with characters, a lot of details, exhibits and a surprising amount of emotional background.

Organizational Behavior

Dan’s class had a much freer flow. He describes his teaching style as socratic. We would participate by asking questions and making statements to add to a point or redirect the discussion’s focus.

  • The articles were only meant to spark discussion and reflection. Again, there was no right or wrong answer.

It was a great start for the year. We met people from all the departments of the program, we got to work in teams and got to know each other—as well as the academic team, before we dive into the routine of the classes. All the hard work was worth it!


Oh, and I think I’m supposed to finish by: Go bears!



You were part of the Bootcamp and have learnings to share ? Comment here or reach out!


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Laila Zouaki

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24. Product manager. Yogi. Writer. Painter. Connector. Awareness junkie. Published on Thought Catalog.

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