Winter Independent Activities period

Hey all,
During January there are no regularly scheduled classes, but you can take some Independent Activities Period (IAP) courses from January 5-30th for credit and just to listen. Below are the classes I took (which were all optional but I thought the content was worthwhile):

6-8 January: Distributed leadership class which was a 6 unit course. One of the main topics of the class was the Sloan 4 Capabilities Leadership Framework (http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-dlm.php). We had learned this framework in our Organizational Processes class during our first fall, but this was a great re-introduction of the topic. I think the most insightful portion of this class was learning about the four player model (http://mitleadership.mit.edu/r-fpmodel.php) which was based on research from a family psychologist. The framework of the four roles used in decision-making has helped me think through decision-making at home with my wife!

12-16 January: Non-credit Conflict Management class. Great class on learning about managing conflict and running training sessions. This class helped me to understand how much my own personality and experiences influences how I engage in conflict with others.

20-23 January: Non-credit Mechanical Assemblies course. This course used to be offered during the a regular academic semester, but Professor Whitney retired (emeritus) so he just teaches over IAP. Professor Whitney spoke a lot about constraints and datum flow.

26-28 January: 3 unit course on Military Leadership. The only day we actually met for the class was the first day, because we had our first big blizzard on the 27th and 28th of January. I was supposed to help lead a small group on the last day of training (on an obstacle course), but that was cancelled.

Overall, I enjoyed the classes I took and found them worthwhile. Many of my classmates were on trips (either through G-Lab or other classes) during January though. I went light on credits last Fall because I was TA'ing pricing, so sitting for 9 credits in January helped shift some load off of this Spring's course load.
Joh