all day all night

This week has kind of sucked. I've been up all night writing papers every night since last Wednesday (including the weekend). Well, every night except one, and I'm not going into that. Today I got up at 5AM to write, and got home from group writing meetings at midnight. Then I wrote again until just now (1:30AM). I just finished a business plan review of a really really stupid company called "froghop", which was a dotcom era mobile outfit. The plan actually had the words "contrived serendipity" in it. That made me want to punch. And "vortal" ...that actually gave me the creeps. It reminded me of that super stupid time of the world where dotcoms were still the shit and every dickweek with a black turtleneck and a "smart drink" was a "genius" and bound to be a millionaire. Crazily, Froghop are still around (but doing something waaaay different than this stupid business plan says). I guess I can read a business plan now and analyse it from the the Sahlman's Fit model and Seidel's RACE model. Don't know what the RACE model is? That's RIGHT you don't because my professor Victor Seidel hasn't published it yet! Cutting edge academic Oxford sheeeeeeat, beeeeeeotch! Yeah well, Victor's a pretty cool guy, and I'm happy for his framework and everything, but it's really not that big of a deal. Just another one of those models you use to talk about stuff in business school. Who knows, maybe he'll be the next Michael Porter. Then it would be one of those models that everybody gets forced to use to talk about stuff in business school. :) Plus, it could be a whole lot worse: he could be making us buy his expensive book just so we could read about his framework (some profs actually do that). Instead, we get it in lecture notes. Maybe when he writes the book he'll start making MBAs do that, but I don't think so, because he really is a very nice guy. With a lot of damn degrees. Ok, so I am exhausted, I am sick of papers, and I have 2 more to write this week, and then I will get drunk on friday. Maybe thursday. And I am having one icy cold vodka right now. Because I'm icy cold cool vodka like that.

me at 1:30 AM

minor note: the blogger template I've been using for the last 3 months has dates built in. so I'm discontinuing the prefixing of entries with dates. like you care. but it's a big deal to me, I sort of feel like I've turned a corner. sometime ask me about how I like my coffee lids to line up.

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19.05.07 catching up

I have a LOT to cover... so much has been going on since my last post.

Grades

Please refer to my previous post on UK Grading before reviewing these scores, they're actually pretty good. :)

I have my grades from Hilary Term back in. I'm not going to go over them in excruciating detail like I did first term, but some post mortem is in order.

Macro Economics : 59% - this went OK. The course content literally changed my life and gave me a whole new way of thinking about things, but in keeping with my previous Econ Department experience, scores are grudgingly handed out. For future Oxonians, the good news is that Macro will make you think and work really hard, and will open your mind a lot, but they almost never ever fail anybody. The prof said, "I've only ever failed a few people and they really tried to make me fail them".

Financial Management : 54% - I'm frankly relieved to have passed this one. The test was a sucker punch, the prof gave us 3 exams to review from, and none of them were anything like the actual exam. The fact that the instruction was generally rushed and poor didn't help. Too bad that this is such an important subject. In any case, I'll take my marginal pass and be quite happy.

International Business and Global Governance : 59% - I should have gotten a better score on this, but it was fine. The class was really interesting and gave me lots of new ways to think about business in an international sense. I also learned some pretty good stories about international fuckups like the CNOOC - Unocal deal, the Sakhalin Island - Shell fiasco, and the truth behind Nike's "sweatshops". Great prof too.

Developing Effective Organizations : 72% - Distinction! This class wasn't as hard as it should have been, and didn't teach as much as it should have, but the stuff we did learn was organization building gold. I learned some great stuff. For future Oxonians: I was on a great team here, and it really paid off.

Marketing : 52% - Barely squeaked by on this one, which is pretty stupid because I learned a ton here, and really feel like I have a much better sense of the real marketing expertise. Unfortunately, the prof sat an impossibly long case for the exam, and it stung me and everyone else. Whatever, I know what I know, and they can't take THAT away from me!

Operations Management : 62% - Just fine on this one, another class where I learned a lot, though the instruction often left a lot to be desired. This subject is so rich and so deep that you could probably spend a year just getting the basics, so a one term course covering lean production, taylorism, six sigma, IDEF0, fragile systems and yes dad, even Goldratt's OPT, is a bit silly. You just can't learn all this stuff meaningfully in one course, and they didn't expect us to.

Entrepreneurial Project : 70% - Distinction! Here are the presentation and the business plan. This was another case of having a kickass group. Initially, it was my idea to make a business plan for a brewery, but it changed a LOT from there. In the end it was beer made to pair with food, sort of like wine. We had a lot of fun, and did a lot of fun (and not so fun) research.

Overall, my average this term was 61%, down from 63% first term. This makes sense as last term was VERY hard and stressful. But, I made it, and still have an average above 60%, which is pretty cool.

Class Progress

This term's classes are coming along well, but there's a lot less work than last term. This is good, because last term almost killed some of us. If you think I'm exaggerating, ask my friend (who shall remain unnamed) whose immune system got run down, at which point he broke out with a major case of Shingles, and had to go home halfway through exams. He was sick as a dog, and still hasn't really recovered. He's not the only example of people who's health crumbled under the stress. This term has been a lot heavier on social stuff, balls, electives, cool speakers, etc. than the last two, even though I'm still working in the library on most saturdays and sundays.

Media Forum

This was the 3rd instalment of a yearly event that brings high level folks from the media industry to speak. We had: Lawrence Aldridge, SVP at Disney; Rene Olivieri CEO Wiley-Blackwell; Chris Cramer MD of CNN International (just retired); Robert Crozier, VP/MD Forbes Europe, Middle East and Africa; Johnathon Wilson Director of Marketing and Business Development - Wall Street Journal, and a bunch of other people. I chatted with Kevin Baughan, Head of Technical Strategy at Virgin Media and most incredibly: Ted Nelson, the guy who came up with the work "hypertext". There were lots of other people I probably should have talked to, but there was only so much time. The media department put up a wiki, and I took a bunch of shitty pictures and posted them. The idea is that there will be some discussion or at least a little wrangling as people try to agree on what the various speakers were trying to get across, etc. After the conference, I sat next to Ted Nelson, and got a laptop demo of his 47 year old software project: xanadu, which is pretty interesting. it's still not quite done yet, but is supposed to ship this year, according to Ted. After the conference, Lawrence Aldridge, Cris Cramer, and a couple of MBAs all went out for drinks: lots of fun. Lawrence is hilarious, and instantly started making fun of Dan Adams (good guy who is also on my summer SCP project, more on this below)... this earned him my respect, and we all had a great evening swapping stories and hearing about life at Disney. Chris didn't say too much to me, but did make fun of me for doing "fuck all" at Oxford beyond scholastics.

Jobs?

Everyone from my wife to my mom to friends back home is wondering: when/where will I get a job? I'm wondering too. Here's the deal as far as I can see: I have a bunch of pokers in the fire, but no offers currently on the table. I am sort of working on / thinking about possibilities with: Barclay's Bank, Jambase, Virgin Media, IBM consulting, financial IT jobs in London in general, plus other weird ideas. None of these are really even close to the interview stage, except for one. We'll see. It seems that the "MBA mill" type jobs that a lot of my colleagues are getting are either not my industry (I-banking, management consulting), not my kind of company, or not interested in me. I think that because I'm in IT, and because I'm 37 (old, by MBA standards), I'm going to have to score my next gig via networking or via headhunters. In either case, I can't really make a lot of headway now, because I'm not available for work until Sept 15th at the earliest, and that's really only if I don't take the trips with Reba and mom that I have planned for September and October. So, in reality I'm not going to be much use for work until November at the earliest (barring an amazing offer), and it's hard to say to people, "hi, I'd like a job in 6 months". In this situation, recruiters simply tell you to contact them in 6 months.

The Schedule

I sent this off to Tasha recently, but it's worth repeating...

June 30 : last day of exams

july 2 - 8 : ethan and eban visiting oxford! The town will never be the same!!!

july 9 -13 : working on SCP project in oxford

july 16 - 27 : working on SCP in san francisco

july 27 (evening) - july 30 : visiting seattle!

july 31 - aug 31 : working on SCP in oxford

sept 1 - sept 7 : TBD

sept 8 - sept 15 : final coursework

sept 15 - oct 15 : free

oct 15 - nov 3 : travelling with mom

SCP

What is an SCP? This is the Strategic Consulting Project. This is an 8 week consulting gig that we do for a company. Ours is for a company called Jambase in San Francisco. We have to solve some problem for them, and as you can imagine, SCP's usually have to do with making the company more money. We'll spend two weeks in SF, 6 weeks in Oxford, and at the end we have to write a big paper, due August 31st. So, there will be a couple of fun weeks in SF, a quick trip up to Seattle to see some folks, and then it's back to the OX1 for the summer.

Ok, now I have to prepare some questions for an interview, I still need to cover... mbats, balls, brasenose, exeter, pembroke, st cross, stuff I'm thinking about, Tim Westergrin, AND the AJ Rathbun Tribute Blog Entry.

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unimportant entry...

Just testing things out. will have details on school, jobs interviews, mbats, balls, visiting brothers, the AJ Rathbun Tribute Blog Entry, summer plans, and other neat items soon!

e

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01.05.07 mayday

Magdalen College (pronounced "Maudlin") has a 500 year old tradition called May Morning in which their church choir sing from the top of Magdalen Tower at dawn on May 1st, to crowds on the streets below. Also included in the tradition is jumping off of Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell river, as well as the optional all-night drinking binge before the ceremony... this is England after all. Skipping the bender, I got up at 5 to make it to the event. The streets were full of people in various garb... some still in formals from last night, some in "may queen" hippie outfits with garlands, others with wacky outfits such as giant sparkly bow ties and union jack hats, etc. Everyone was moving toward Magdalen, and many were clearly drunk.

high street at dawn

magdalen tower

I ran into Pat Butler and some friends of his... they had been rocking the all night fantastic. I got some great footage of Pat's friend going on about how hot Reba is, I think her reaction is based on the show we played at the business school the other day. Pretty funny stuff.

the tower

Apparently the river has been so low recently that a couple of years ago some 50 people were hospitalized because they jumped off the bridge. So, today the cops barricade the bridge and try to keep the students from killing themselves. Not all that unreasonable, really.

cops keeping people off of the bridge

After a stop at the Merton MCR for some brunch, I walked back across the meadow, and got a few snaps of the cows. I like the meadow cows, they are funny and always want to smell you.

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