Two exams on Monday, one on Tuesday and one today, now I have tomorrow off and two more on Friday. The exams ran like this:
Financial Management: 9:30 AM, Day 1, BAM!!!! Right in your face with a totally unannounced totally unplanned level of difficulty and super fucked up questions. NO ONE finished the exam of 10 questions out of 200 odd MBAs. We had 1.5 hours and the 3 practice tests we were given by the prof left us utterly unprepared (not to mention the lectures, but that's another story). Apparently the exam school (part of the university) had chastised the prof for giving exams that were too easy in previous years, and told him to make it harder. We had the same amount of time as students had in previous years. I guess he showed them! Either this thing is going to be curved like a mofo or I am going to be resiting this exam with 195 of my closest friends this spring. The MBA class reps have lodged a complaint with the academic committee at SBS, and they will probably address it at the typical Oxford (sub-glacial) pace. What a bummer!
IBGG: 2:30 PM Monday. Not as bad, but not great. I didn't like how I did on this one, it just didn't feel like I got in all the models and concepts that I should. It's probably a passing paper, and my scores going into the exam were at distinction level (70%) so I'm not worried about passing. Though I would have liked to get a good grade in this class! I certainly learned alot and enjoyed it.
Marketing: 9:30 AM Tuesday. This was OK too. I finished, which is more than I can say for a number of my colleagues, but it wasn't concept rich like I wanted. I did cover all the points that the prof wants covered in a marketing plan, but still, it left me with a lame taste in my mouth. Probably another passing grade. Combined with my marks going into the exam, I'll be fine. What sucks is that we even had 3 hours to do this one! Everyone I spoke with (except Barry, mad genius boy wonder, of course) said they spent way too much time on the financial analysis and got all goofed up in the numbers taking time from the essay writing. That's certainly what happened to me: I wrote right up to the bell. Oh well.
Operations Management: 9:30 AM Wednesday (today). This went pretty well. I had to bullshit a bit on a couple of answers, but I think that I even covered those reasonably well enough. The rest of the questions were cut and dried: I knew them and kicked out the jams. The f-ed up thing is that I committed about 30 major concepts (each with 5 to 10 sub concepts) to memory for this test, and these STILL didn't give me all the answers I needed. Oh well, it turns out that I am not a human mimeograph, and repeated Oxford exams demonstrate this fairly consistently. I still learned a lot, and actually rather like the subject, so as long as I pass, I'm cool
Now I have the day off, and tomorrow off as well. I have to study for DEO and Macro next, because both of those will be coming at me hard on Friday, so I will need to get cracking. This term has been exhausting: I have been studying from 10AM to Midnight or later every night, weekends included for two weeks, the exception to this being meals, trips to the stationary store, and exams. After Friday, we have an Operations Management paper due MONDAY (40% of our grade), and then a Financial Management paper due Friday (40% as well). Given the level of general disaster and mayhem around the exam, I suspect that the MBAs will be working their assess off to get a killer FM paper in by Friday. This, of course, means that everyone will have to be really good or else get stuck on the low end of the curve. SUCK SUCK SUCK!!!
Reba, forever the trooper, has been taking care of me very well: cooking, cleaning, making sure I have clean subfusc, making late night tea, being supportive, quietly reading while I study, and oh yeah WORKING TO SUPPORT HER STUDENT HUSBAND. So, once again I can only say how much I appreciate her. She's going down to Amsterdam to meet Tasha and Keith who are on vacation, but due to the scheduling conflicts with my EXAMS AND PAPERS, couldn't come to Oxford. :( After next week, Reba and I are going to go down to Paris to meet them for a few days at least. That will be fun.
Ok, now I study for DEO.
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