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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