Todd Pinkerton

MIT has a funky 4-1-4 schedule -- there's a short period between the two semesters, and during the one-month period students can take classes for credit, which are designed to be more 'fun' than their usual requirements. One of this is called The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans, which serves to compliment the annual MIT 100K startup contest. Students learn what it takes to write a good business plan, and in the process, how to navigate the waters of starting a company and finding funding. So far it's been a very informative course. If you're not in the Boston-area to attend, the course materials are available for download.

Living and working in the Boston area provides a vast amount of opportunity -- you think we pay these insane housing costs for nothing? -- one of which is access to a huge educational community. Higher ed is a way of life here, with dozens of schools of all shapes and sizes in or around Boston. If you want to learn something, there's someone teaching it. But when it comes to 'life skillz' , where to turn? Most people associate 'street smarts' with everything you can't get a PhD in, from balancing your checkbook to how to hotwire a car. But there's a lot they don't teach you in undergrad, or graduate school, or postdoc... things we're either expected to know, or 'pick up' , or something we want to give us that edge against the cutthroat job competition. One such example is negotiation skills -- how to ask for more money in an interview, or how to get your landlord to lower the rent, or how to settle a heated disagreement amicably. My good friend (and former roommate) Carl Tashian clued me in to the Harvard Program on Negotiation, which is getting rave review from ...