Bootcamp: the great appetizer of the MEng program
What did I learn in a week?

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.
- At first, it was really intimidating to answer Lee’s questions. Our grade for the class is based on the quality of our participation. During the first day, I could not get out of my own head, and would just try really hard to find something smart to say. But it’s only when I forced myself to forget about what I could learn by focusing on the class, that I stepped into a more natural thinking and was able to add more qualitative value.
- In a few days only, it was obvious the whole class was stepping up. Answering questions became really empowering. We started structuring our answers, supporting or countering classmates’ arguments, always in respectful way and using tangible arguments from the case study. This was fomented by Lee allowing us to have mini 1:1 debates when two students disagreed on a point. Beyond the bootcamp, that taught us there’s nothing wrong with a healthy debate, and how to practically conduct one.
- Lee was controlling the direction of the discussion. He was sharp about not going off the point to be able to explore all the main points of the case, and would challenge us about what we argued.
- He made sure to push us enough in our thinking. It wasn’t enough to restate the obvious. The point was to dig deep, to read between the lines and reach a certain level of abstraction in our reflection, without losing sight of what were the case’s facts—no invention from our part and he demanded a high attention to detail. Again, after a few days it became more natural to be decisive and confident about our argument, to the extent of sometimes countering the professor’s point. It was really satisfying intellectually.
- The cases we studied depicted tough situations. It was hardly ever a black and white case, so it was always a great exercise to pick a side, find compelling arguments for it, but also play the devil’s advocate and see it from a different perspective. Most of the situations were problems we, as futur engineers and leaders, could easily get caught up in. So being mindful of the intricacy of some cases already gives us a head start.
- My favorite moment? Probably being deposed by a real lawyer while role-playing as an entrepreneur. Ha!
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.
- This course challenged our critical thinking. The articles always presented a skewed or incomplete perspective of the topic approached. “As you can see, I only give you articles I have a problem with”. Dan would push us to go past being “good information gatherers” to step into a critical mode: why is this incomplete, what is missing in this analysis, what information are we lacking, what can we conclude from this.
- He was eager to share is own experience and give examples from his own professional and personal life. He was also really open to answering all of our questions, and making sure everyone could participate, even if that meant running a bit behind or going off the article’s track: “This is the last one… okay I’ll take two more. Alright, one more and then we need to move on.”
- Organizational Behavior (OB) is SO interesting. Power, influence, negotiation, decision making, organizational culture—they are all topics that revolve around how human nature can influence the seemingly most rational situation. My Mom is drilling me to do a Ph.D and if I do, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment: it would be in OB.
- All the lessons we learned are applicable in every situation where there is an organization involved. We are biased to think of these as companies, big or small. However, couples, families, groups of friends, universities, countries are also organizations. I believe these skills will be incredibly useful beyond our professional lives.
- If I had to pick one important word that sums up what we’ve studied and observed, it would be: self-awareness. In every topic we studied, there was no way to have a perfect outcome. It wasn’t about becoming a perfect manager, a perfect leader, a perfect employee. These discussions allowed us to become aware of the skews leading us to certain behaviors, so that we can hopefully improve on them and leverage them.
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!

