18.11.06 distinction!

Like everything else at Oxford, grades are weird, non standardised with anybody else in the world, and subject to a lot of debate.  In the US, students get grades based on fairly straightforward percentages <60%(F) is a fail, <70% (D) is a really bad and you’ll get kicked out of your university if you keep it up , <80%(C) is totally average and you won’t get into your degree program if you average a C across degree related courses, <90% (B) is pretty good… so good for you, and <100%(A) is kick-ass.  Anyone getting 100% or more is a freak, trying to get into Harvard, or maybe wants to become an academic.  However, it IS totally possible to get 100% in a class, which makes sense, given the whole PERCENTAGE concept.  And since teachers often give extra assignments, extra points test questions, an etc. so folks on the low end of the scale can boost their score, the freaks have an opportunity to get 102% or whatever.  On the other end of the scale, you can easily end up with 40%, 20%, or even 0% if you don’t show up for the test, are totally high, never studied, etc. 

No so at Oxford (big surprise).

Here, grades are given on a scale of 40% to 80%. That’s right, forty PERCENT to eighty PERCENT (why not just make ten one louder?).  50% in a class is a passing grade.  <50% means you failed and have to take the class again (called a re-sit).  50% to 59% is a semi indication that you squeaked by and also semi suck, while 60% to 69% is considered typical, and 70% and above is called a “distinction”.  This means you kicked butt, and if you got grades like that all the time, you get to eat at some special dinner with the dean once a quarter, or whatever.  These percentages apparently also translate into later (british) life because what overall percentage you get lets you list on your resume whether or not you got 1st, 2nd, and whatever else honours, but this is mainly where super anal firms are concerned (sees below).  This system was recently explained to me by a guy in my crew boat, but I don’t remember all the details.  The funny thing about these percentages is that nobody who actually turns in a paper or exam ever gets less than a 40%, and usually, a dismal failure is a 45%.  Oh yeah, the business school also seem to only give out grades in increments of 5%, so, there is no getting 63.4%.  An 80% is something that happens once to a couple of super genius people a term per class: it’s totally rare.  85% and up simply do not happen, end of story.  Except for maybe once in the history of the business school or something like that. 

Why do it like this?  Here’s what I think:

1. Keeping top scores low makes the distribution of scores look normal (mba talk!) without having to hand out super low grades… that is, the grades look like they have a pretty even spread from 45 to 80, but almost everybody gets to pass, because 50 is where the passing grades start off.  They really don’t want to weed out students from an mba school the way they do in certain US undergrad programs, so they force a curve where everybody looks pretty good.

2. They like it to look like Oxford is sooooooo hard that just getting 50% of what an Oxford prof asks you on a test is good enough for mere mortals.

3. They don’t like to ask questions with really direct clearly right/wrong answers.  This is very different from all of my US schooling, but may be typical at US mba programs, I don’t know (chime in via comments if anybody out there has an opinion on this).  Back home, questions always had clear answers, they were either right or wrong, and often, they were multiple guess, even if you had to do a lot of work to get to the multiple guess answers.  Here, there is a lot of context and potential for elaboration which leaves room for you to get 3/5 marks (that’s what they call points here: marks) for answering something correctly, but not demonstrating your deep knowledge in a verbose way.  If that makes any sense.  They also seem to give out a couple of marks for trying, even though you’re wrong (more evidence that they don’t like to fail mbas).

Anyway, the point of this whole bit is that I got a Finance paper back with a 70%, which is a distinction, and means I kicked butt.  It sounds pretty lame if you don’t know all the crazy Oxford details behind it, but there you go, it’s a great score.  This is an especially big deal for me because 1) I totally suck at Finance, and it is really really hard for me, 2) I thought I was going to fail this assignment, and was really relieved and 3) I decided early that my goal here was to learn a lot, meet a lot of connections, have a swell time at Oxford, and get the minimum passing grade.  I seriously don’t give a shit about getting distinctions, honours, gold stars, or any other BS like that, I’m just not at a place in life where stuff like that drives what I do.  Plus, no one that I’m going to deal with in the real world is going notice or care if I got honours or not.  I should qualify that statement a bit: there are indeed some firms, as mentioned above, particularly big management consulting and investment banking firms, who are quite serious about what your honours are, kind of like how some companies back in the states care if you were valedictorian or want to know your GPA, etc.  These are also the companies that make you do 7 interviews before offering you a job.  The same companies that give you a bunch of crazy math problems, case studies, tests, and whatever else as part of the interview process.  The same companies that seriously expect you to work 80 hours a week, EVERY week, FOR EVER. 

I don’t want to work for these companies. 

This is for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that anyone that anal is going rub me the wrong way, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy working for them anyway.  So, I got a distinction, it was cool, I was surprised… but it’s really no biggie, and not something I’m going to purposely try to repeat in the future. 

 

Even so, I did feel pretty good about it. 

 

this is the view from our deck, it’s been stormy lately

 

 

 

 

13.11.06 motorhead!

This was a mostly typical weekend here…

 Friday: went to happy hour at the school, hung out with stressed MBAs and got loaded, went out for dinner and more drinks, came home and sacked out.  The big difference this weekend was that Reba’s cousin Jeff and his girl Jennifer were staying with us, so they came along too. 

Saturday: got up to the boathouse at 10 to 8 AM but then we got booted from our rowing slot (again) and had to settle for ergonomic machines. WEAK.  Our coach Tom (really great guy) tried to get us to run up to the gym after getting booted from our slot, and the non undergraduate contingent on the team (us old guys) decided that was BULLSHIT, and walked.  Had breakfast with Barry, tried unsuccessfully to study and then equally unsuccessfully to take a nap, then met with the NBD dudes for our kickoff.  The NBD is our New Business Development project, which is a fancy way of saying the “write a business plan” project.  We are going to make a line of gluten-free beer for celiacs.  This is a bit odd, but it will be fun because we’ll get to go to breweries, try a lot of beer, and learn about the brewing process, etc., while making a business plan.  Plus, it’s about 500,000,000 times more exciting than “some gay dotcom idea”, which I’ve had more than enough of in my life up to now.  After this, the dudes went out to dinner, had more beers, and then went home.  Chilly chill.

Sunday: Reba made breakfast for me, Jeff, Jen, and Shelby (we have adopted Shelby) which was lots of fun.  Then, Reba walked Jeff and Jen to the bus station (they’re off to Paris today) while I studied finance, which almost made sense after about 4 hours.  CAPM and WACC baby.  The next bit was the TRUE highlight of the weekend… Reba and I went to see Motorhead!! 

 

the classic logo

 

Lemmy Kilmister: Mr. Motorhead,

in his world famous singing pose

 

yes, he is SUPER ugly and that

is a wart on his face

 

YAHOOOO!!!!!!  They were awesome, and totally fun to watch.  I should point out once again how cool my wife is: she actually likes Motorhead.  And really prefers the fast songs.  How did I ever get so lucky?  Anyway, we sat in the back of a small theater in Oxford, and watched one of the alltime great heavy metal bands do it’s thing.  Lemme is about 60, and appears to have been drinking and smoking pretty hardcore for at least 58 of those years, although he never has gotten fat, for whatever reason.  The rest of the band look bad as well, but more on the pudgy/gray and less on the pickled/livingdead side of things.  They play fast hard and loud, and have their own sort of sloppy groovy they get into which works, but certainly isn’t very tight.  Lemmy screwed up the bass intro to the song “Ace of Spades”, which is their signature tune.  This exact same thing happened the last time I saw them as well… it’s not clear if he does it on purpose, or if the distortion is just too over the top for me to be able to pick out what’s going on, or if he doesn’t care, or what.  No one in audience cares about this anyway, Motorhead still ROCK.  Their set and onstage comments were just about the same as when I saw them in Seattle 2 years ago, and they were certainly very fucking loud (as they should be, they were once in the Guiness book of world records as the loudest band on earth) but one thing was really different here: the crowd.  First of all, there were no pat downs at the door, and no restrictions against re-entry.  Further, the age range was HUGE: lots of people in their 40s and certainly some in their 50s…

Brief sidebar: we went to the bar “The Gloucester Arms” for a pint while we waited out the crappy opening band, this turned out to be a very good idea.  First of all, the GA is a “heavy metal” bar in downtown Oxford, complete with all-metal jukebox, metal band posters on the walls, goofy metal dudes, and slutty looking chubby metal chicks, all wearing black tshirts with some metal band’s name on them.  Except for tonight, where the whole scene was repeated, except everyone was wearing Motorhead tshirts.    We ended up talking to a couple of bald, portly, Motorhead tshrit sporting 50 somethings who were also going to the show, and apparently had the same pint-and-wait-out-the-crappy-opening-band idea we had.  They were nice enough guys, if a bit unintelligible accent-wise, but the kicker was this: as one of them left, he put on his coat, turned to us with a resigned look, flashed the metal sign, and said, “Right. Well, rock on then.”, turned, and exited the bar.  PRICELESS PRICELESS PRICELESS.  Back to the story…

…as well as young people all the way down to some 10 year olds with their mom sitting behind us!  One of the kids sitting behind us was totally cute, he kept yelling “you rock!”, and “yeah, metal!” at the band, and there were quite a few other parent and kid combos there tonight as well.  This show vibe was entirely friendly and fun, and people were clearly just there to have a good time and watch a favorite band.  There were no fights, and really no seriously scary people, just a few old semi-rough looking bikers here and there and a scantily dressed fat chick who was intent on head banging and sexy dancing while turned around facing toward the crowd (funny exhibitionist fat chick).  The security was non existent, but so was the hostility, and people honestly behaved very well.  This experience contrasts with the show we attended in Seattle a few years back: that really was a whole other deal.  That show was made up of drunk skinheads, crusty punks, weird-beard sketchy white trash metal dudes from the way-out suburbs (probably on meth), as well as a sprinkling of those sarcastic hipster types (naming no names).  The vibe at the Seattle show was hostile and negative, with a tone indicating that violence could break out at any time.  And it did.  At the door, the pat down searches were in full effect, and the security goons (and they were total goons) were taking peoples’ spiked belts, ripping chains off of chain wallets, confiscating banned items, etc.  I guess that seeing Motorhead over here is something like seeing Grand Funk Railroad back home: yeah it’s loud rock and roll, but nobodys getting their head kicked in over it.  In Seattle, and maybe in the US in general(?), Motorhead seem to represent something a little darker, a little more burn-out, and certainly more ready to cross over into the violent sphere.  Of course, then again, maybe that was because they were playing with the Dwarves?  I dunno, all I can say is that it was a hoot, and I got a cool new tshirt and hat, as well as a break from the books.  I came back and memorised 16 (“capital employed” isn’t a formula, really) accounting ratio formulae, and now I’m finishing up my night with a post.  Back to the shizz!

 

net profit margin = pbit / turnover

gross profit margin = gross profit / turnover

avg settlement time for debtors = avg trade debtors / credit sales

avg settlement time for creditors = avg trade creditors / credit purchases

sales per employee = turnover / employee

sales to capital employed = turnover / capital employed 

gearing ratio = avg long term liabilities / avg capital employed

return on capital employed = pbit / capital employed

average stock turnover period = avg stock held / cost of sales x 365

current ratio = current assets / current liabilites

actid test ratio = current assets – stocks / current liabilites

gearing ratio = longterm liabilities / capital employed

interest cover = pbit / interest payable

dividend payout ratio = dividends announced for payout / earnings available for dividends

earnings per share = pait / total shares

P/E ratio = market value per share / earnings per share

…and capital employed = long term liabilities + share capital + reserves

29.10.06 merton time ceremony

 

Merton's peaceful precincts are disturbed once a year by the (in)famous Time Ceremony, when students, dressed in formal sub-fusc, walk backwards around Fellows' Quad drinking port. Traditionally participants also hold candles but in recent years this practice has been dropped, and many students have now adopted the habit of linking arms and twirling around at each corner of the quad. The purpose is ostensibly to maintain the integrity of the space-time continuum during the transition from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time which occurs in the early hours of the last Sunday in October. There are two toasts associated with the ceremony, the first is "to good old time" whilst the second is "long live the counter revolution!".

– “Merton Time Ceremony” Wikipedia, 29 October 2006

 

Sadly, I am so busy that I am posting highlights of last weekend’s activities a week and a half late.  Ok, that makes it two weekends ago.  Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. 

 

The actual story of the Merton Time Ceremony is somewhat lost to history, and I suspect, to no small degree of embarrassment.  The founders claim lots of things, but specifically that …

“The purpose and effect of this is to create a localised area in which natural time stands still for one hour, in the hope that into this void of depressed natural time thus created will flow sufficient natural time from other areas to nearly equalise civil time throughout the country within one revolution of the Earth, thus reducing  by several seconds the time it would otherwise take nature and mankind to re-adapt their diurnal cycle after an abrupt ‘stationary jet-lag’”. 

…and that is the layman’s version.  Check out “lots of things” above to see the actual sciency version.  Here is a three part layman’s layman interpretation of what really is (and was) going on.

What It Is

Clocks get turned back every year in the fall, the founders thought they could “fix” space/time by walking backwards for 1 hour during the switch.  Because it’s Merton and Oxford, that means drunk and wearing subfusc.

 What It Was

I can only speculate on this, but I think that what REALLY happened was the founders were big geeks with 1) too much physics on the brain and 2) nothing to do on a Saturday night.  So, they though up some absurd, semi-Pythonesque, 70’s style wacky ritual during which they could be witty in a performance art sort of way, and drunk.  And have a semi excuse for having nothing to do on a Saturday night… if they were like the rest of the student body, they would have been out disco dancing, getting loaded, and picking up on chicks.  But they weren’t: they were home trying to impress each other with how witty and science-core they could be.  Ok, I can relate to that.  There were probably about 3 people the first Time Ceremony, if the “lots of things” (above) documentation is any indication.

What it Has Become

Today, it looks like a fucked up backwards drunk subfusc Hajj.  Basically, there are hundreds of Mertonians guzzling bottles of port, linked arm in arm, walking backwards around the quad FAST.  It’s almost kind of slam-dancy.  Glass gets broken, drunks tumble over, toes get crushed, bodies get slammed into, and people get hurt.  It was totally disaster-cool, like a Primate-5 show that had gone all highbrow.  With less blood.  I didn’t get a good picture of the motion, but I have some step by step that should help clarify things...

 

everyone meets on the chestnut lawn just before the clocks change

 

filing along to the fellows tower

 

 

down the corridor to the quadrangle

 

in the quadrangle

(remember, these people are all walking backwards, FAST)

 

see?  they’re drunk!

 

nothing was going to stop this guy

(notice dude in red robe on the right, a founder)

 

filing out after

 

spooky post time ceremony quad

 

tired tired tired e

 

 

A Word On The Founders

I didn’t meet these guys, but did see the effects of their presence on a room they had just left.  They basically came into the MCR, sat down, and refused to answer questions about the ceremony, claiming that it was all on the website.  Whatever.  They then made some crack about there being too much estrogen in the room (there were no women at Merton in the 70s, and there are lots now) and too many provincials (grad students are mostly not English, again a change from the 70s).  Then, they split.  I saw them coming out, looking a bit crusty in a junior high school science teacher sort of way, like they’d been wearing the same robes and suits and ties since the 70s.  They didn’t say anything to me, but boy oh boy did they piss off the “provincial” girls in the room!  I’m kind of sorry I missed the whole exchange: getting shit on by snooty upper-crust English is one of those “quintessential” experiences you look for when in England.  Sort of like getting camphelobacter jejueni from eating chicken sashimi in Japan, right?  Right?