DONE!!!

My last exam (Financial History) was Friday, and went well. We all went for drinks at the Bear after, and had a swell time. Leaving the exam schools for the last time was a bit weird... the exam went fine, and we went out the Merton street gate (pictured below) instead of the front door, another Oxford tradition. Juergen and I were discussing how much our test taking abilities have progressed since the first exams in Michaelmas: now we have every minute of the exam planned out. For example, when I went in yesterday, I had 2 hours to write 3 essays on 3 of 7 options, and a minute by minute plan of how to get that done. The plan was as follows:

:00 to :15 - regurgitate all notes, without even LOOKING at the questions. Just get them all out where I can refer to them. In my one-track mind, once the "writing" track starts, the "remembering" track gets shut down. 8 weeks worth of Financial History notes actually look a lot like the board below. It's also creepy to see how much better I am at memorising that stuff now. 4 or 5 times through and I've got it all committed to memory. That was certainly NOT the case back in the fall.

the regurgitated notes basically look like this

0:15 to 0:25 - write first essay outline... outlines are KEY to to writing essays easily. I leaned that the hard way at Oxford.

0:25 to 0:45 - write first essay... it's amazing how I can write and think about other things at the same time, and how I can put sentences together on the fly now.

0:45 to 0:55 - write second essay outline

0:55 to 1:15 - write second essay

1:15 to 1:25 - write third essay outline

1:25 to 1:45 - write third essay

1:45 to 2:00 - review essays... I got to this about 3 minutes late, because I got a bit carried away with talking about that 1929 crash. Still, it's kind of amazing that I kept so close to schedule.

Of course I also have all my little test taking rituals down... 3 Pilot V-ball .5 pens, green piece of paper with student ID number, ID card on desk, watch off and sitting on desk, reading glasses, cloth cuff links (the metal ones clink too much when you're writing), etc. Because this was my last exam, I wore a red carnation, which looks nice with the subfusc. Normally, if I have to answer 3 questions of 7, I know about 2.5. This time, I knew 5! I actually had to spend some of my outlining time picking which subjects I knew the most about... I suppose that is, as Pete would put it, a good problem to have.

Juergen, me, Ryan and Heidi leave via the Merton gate

waving goodbye to the exam schools... the red carnation means this is my last exam

The saying above the exam school clock is the "legend" or motto of Oxford University. It says "dominus illuminatio mea", which means "the lord is my light" and is the opening words of Psalm 27. I like to think it means "lord show me the light"... and I think of some poor student sitting in the exam school hoping for a little divine inspiration. :)

Today, I wrote my last bit for my Customer Insights group paper, and revisited my Negotiations paper one last time. The group paper will get polished a bit by my fellow group members, and handed in by Mike on Monday morning. The Negotiation paper is an individual one, and I will hand that in Monday myself. It's due before noon, so that's about all I have to get done at this point! It feels great to be done, and great to have done well at the end. I was pretty worried about Financial History, but it worked out well after all. Now just 2 days until Ethan and Eban get here, that will be fun fun fun! My friend Eric Peterson from Seattle is in town today with his folks, I think we're going to have some dinner, and maybe I can show them around a bit.

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stay on target

my desk, 12:19 am, 28 june 2007

Just one more day of studying and then the financial history exam happens at 9:30 AM. That will be my last Oxford exam. Ever. I can now talk about the effects of legal tradition, social capital, endowment and politics on financial development. I can also tell you the 4 main academic perspectives on why the 1929 stock market crash became a depression. On Saturday, I help out a bit on a customer insights group paper for Monday, which is also when I simply turn in the negotiations paper that I've already written. I think the weekend will be relatively chill. I really dig this financial history, it's like economics with better stories.

Getting to the end. I can see the exhaust port just down the trench. I'm about to turn off my targeting computer. It's time to let go and feel the force...

(credit is due to cory for introducing this one to the lexicon)

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one more down

Finished my media strategies exam today. Weird exam... not really heavy on specific questions, more sort of looking for you to expound upon things. I thing I did well enough. Now it's 1.5 days of writing for Customer Insights, and then 2 days of studying for Financial History, the killer test. That will be a beeeeeotch. Oh well, it's all over in less than 7 days now. And with that, I will leave you all with one of my very favorite pictures of all time... me and my moustache (don't worry, it's a few years old).

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farewells and one last ball

This week I have a cold! La-me. I've just finished my negotiations paper, which was actually pretty fun because I got to analyse a negotiation I was familiar with. As it turns our, Michael Moore is making a documentary called "Sicko" about the fiasco that is the US medical system, and they wanted to get my band's domain for the movie. They wanted it for free, and we wanted $100,000... needless to say it didn't pan out too well. Anyway, it was interesting to analyse the negotiation using all of the theory I've picked up over the last 8 weeks. Too bad I didn't know about that stuff when they first contacted me a year ago! One of the neat aspects of this paper is that I asked friends, mentors, colleagues, and family members how I should tackle the negotiation, and analysed each of their inputs separately in the paper, so I'm posting it here for folks to read. If you can cut through the academic BS (required when writing academic papers), it's kind of funny and interesting. One hint: BATNA means Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement.

One of many funny things about Oxford is that every time you choose to do one thing, you are giving up on something else. You really have to get used to juggling stuff. So, because I had a fever last tuesday night, I had to miss my pal Brandon's birthday. But, I still managed to get to a dinner at AJ and Caroline's wednesday night and the St Cross Ball thursday night. Admittedly, I took it easy and went home early, but I just couldn't bear to pass up on these once in a lifetime deals. I missed Jimmy Carter's speech at the Sheldonian thursday because I had to get some progress on the negotiations paper. :( Pat Butler (latest Birdbath bassist) actually got to meet the man. Pretty darn cool.

Dinner with the Dennisons, Jurys and McInerneys

AJ and Caroline were kind enough to have the 6 of us over for a roast lamb dinner... good stuff. We chatted and teased each other, and talked about courses, but underlying the whole evening was the spectre of leaving. I may see these folks a few times over the summer, and then once again intensively in September for a week... and then everyone is off to their far flung destinations and back to normal life. I caught a photo of Claudia leaving with Andrew and Ava, and I wondered when we would sit down to a dinner like this again? I was hopped up on cold medicine, and just sat in the corner enjoying everyone's company, trying to keep from getting everyone else sick.

Gabe, Caroline, AJ, Ava, Claudia, Andrew

Reba, Katie, Gabe (giving me the hard-ass look)

McInerneys out the door... when will we see them again?

St Cross Ball

My friends Renee, Vai, and Shannon are all members of St Cross College, which is a new college in a very old building (the Pusey House... love the name!). St Cross is small and really beautiful. The ball was masterfully planned by Ms. Shannon, and had a French Revolution theme, complete with a beheaded Marie A. I was still sick, but feeling better. We all met at the famous Eagle and Child for dinner before, and then went to the ball. There was dancing, champagne, lawn bowling, croquet... all good silly Oxfordy stuff.

Reba and Monica in the cab on the way over

Renee at the Eagle and Child

Brandon in the cab with the Thames (Isis) in the background

Monica at the Eagle and Child... what a cutie!

me and my lovely wife at the ball

Reba and Vai at the guillotine

later on that night...

Sylvester Awards

I touched on this briefly in another post, but thought I should go into a bit more detail... every year, there is a silly awards show, called the Sylvesters where the MBAs vote on funny awards to give each other. I won the "Inaugural <name witheld> Best Use of Class Mailing List Award" which is basically for sending out too many weird requests to the class email list. The person who really deserved this was so obvious that they decided to name the award after him. He would send out these crazy 5am drunk mails that really did not make sense whatsoever... I just asked a lot of questions. :) And of course, another incarnation of the Birdbath, I think the 7th(?), played a few songs. I wrote a song for the occasion, called "Fear and Loathing in the OX1". OX1 is my post code. I'm going to try to do a home studio version of this this summer when I get time.

Reba is so cute when she lays down the rock!

Tales from the Birdbath version 7 (me, Pat, Reba, Gabe)

obligatory Oxford dudes in tuxes drinking... Ashish, me, Claude, and Kaz

(note: I've prepared an alternate version of this photo here. Ashish, please let me know if you prefer it to the original)

And one more...

Not sure exactly why, but I just LOVE this one of Reba.

budgie.

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view from the deck

Today I'm stuck inside with a cold and studying for my Financial History exam next week. :( I would like to be done with school now. Actually, it's not much further to go... two classes are totally done, and I'm nearly done outlining my final paper for one class. That leaves 2 exams and 1 other paper. It will all be over in 1.5 weeks, no matter what happens! Here's a view from the deck over the Thames (Isis) with all the summer greenery. A coot has been raising a chick down in the shrubs to the lower right. The geese, ducks and even swans have chicks right now too. It's neat to see the little fuzzy new birds all over.

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got a new camera

This is utterly stupid, but I go a new camera, and wanted to try uploading some video via youtube to the blog. Reba lost the old camera a few weeks ago when she was out drinking with the WAGs, so I had an excuse to get a new one. I guess it's OK, it's a Pentax Optio L30... 7.1mp, 3x zoom, iso3200 and with anti jiggle software built in. Seems cool enough.

...a bunch of folks from next year's class came out to the Jamfactory with some current year folks for lunch and Q&A. So I decided to try out the new camera. Yes, that's right. This post is stupid.

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nearly done

Things are coming to and end now. 9th week of Trinity term has begun, so I have taken my last class at Oxford. Unless you count the 1 week "capstone" course at the end of the year. Apparently we have to write a paper and do some group work as well. So, while that technically will be the end, practically speaking, we are just about through... left on the list are:

* write two papers (this week)

* sit two exams (next week)

* summer consulting project (two weeks in San Francisco, 6 weeks in Oxford)

* write up the consulting project (last week of August)

* 1 week capstone class and papers (1st week of September)

...and then I graduate from the OX1! OX1 is my post code in oxford. Speaking of this, we played an end of year awards ceremony this past Saturday, this time it was me, Pat, Reba and Gabe. The show was lots of fun and we debuted a new song, "fear and loathing in the OX1"... sort of a mba at oxford theme song. I plan on making a recorded version with protools once I'm done with exams and papers. Here are some pics of this latest version of the birdbath...

pat sings "big bottom"

in all our glory

my sweet wife on the drums

gabe throws down some sweet indie style noodles

my mouth is big

The plan for the fall is shaping up. Reba wants to travel a bit, so it looks like the "get a job" part of this whole deal will be going on hold for a bit. I get done with school on Sept 15, and then have a month off. I think I'll go back to Seattle for a while, and maybe visit some folks around Europe too, until Reba finishes her contract on Oct 16. Then, she and I will go on some trips together... Santorini, Cedar Key, maybe Belgium finally. Then, mom and maybe dad come out for my Merton graduation ceremony on Nov 3. After this its a trip to Normandy with mom for two weeks. Then for the last bit of November and December, we'll be in Seattle. At the end of December it's out to Taiwan to see Frank and June's wedding. Then, some time in Hong Kong and it looks like we'll have a train trip to Tibet after! Neat-O! THEN, back to Oxford to find a gig, get a London apartment, etc. This Wednesday we extend the lease to February 15 so we'll have time for all this... it's kind of scary because I really want to get a job lined up now... I guess that's conservative part of my nature. At the same time, I really want to have some cool travels with Reba, and with my mom, and it's really important to Reba to have some time with her family and new nephew at Christmas. Decisions, decisions. Well, after we sign the February extension on the lease this Wed, the decision will be pretty much made!

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springtime

I've been really busy with papers and visitors, but this picture was just too cute to not post...

me and reebs strolling through the gardens at merton

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