Nov 182007
 

No fun, just heavy excel-ing and general analysis.

OK, that’s not true. I have had some fun. Mostly at the expense of my stress levels and my ability to sleep.

7th week starts tomorrow. Three assignments due next week, and one the following week (analyse eBay and the internet auction industry in microeconomic terms in 3000 words or less, using a semester’s worth of theory that you’ve sort of gotten explained to you in 6 easy lessons).

And it’s the ChristChurch Regatta, which is sort of the crappy novice boat race that us crappy novices get to race in. Our boat is doing well, despite the -3 temperatures and the general darkness and our lack of outings. I just hope we don’t blow it on the first race, even though we are racing a boat one level above us. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

Lots of general tiredness/stressedoutness/etc. I’ve been sick and not getting nearly enough sleep (sounds familiar?) and slept in the school’s common room for almost 2 hours. Then stayed up working on something or other dumb until late. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I managed to NOT get in a 500 word entry about myself which might someday be worth £150 from Amazon in exchange for doing this blog– the school had offered us the chance to be an “official” blogger to promote the school, which would have been nice except there’s no time. Though I’m doing this for my friends, mostly, and in case it proves useful to someone who’s considering doing this. If you are, I can only suggest that you get a lot of fun in now, ’cause it’s going to be all work/all play once you’re here.

I’ts actually not that bad. I made a list for a friend earlier this week about some of the great things about Oxford/that I’ve gotten to do in the 7 (is it only 7? really??? I can hardly remember my life outside of this…) weeks since I got here, and it went a little something like this:

  • Meeting the President of Ghana/Chair of the AU.
  • Meeting Hamid Karzai.
  • The intellectual stimulation of drunken late-night conversations.
  • Walks across ChristChurch Meadow in the pre-dawn gloom.
  • Pints of local beer at the pub(s) which date back to 12something AD.
  • Last week’s Diwali celebration with fireworks at the b-school with 40 countries or so worth of MBAs eating Indian food and dancing to Bhangra.
  • Pimms and Lemonade at 2 AM when we’re not supposed to have the bar open at the MCR.
  • Dining at high table.
  • Dining at formal hall.
  • Dining at other people’s halls.
  • Meeting the guy who started Glastonbury (with like 12 other people in the room).
  • Realising that some of this stuff I’m learning is actually sinking in and may be useful.
  • Realising that a lot of this stuff that I’m learning is useless from the viewpoint of the real world but may be useful as a model Or not.
  • Meeting people from the Clinton Foundation people.
  • Having a thought that I might actually get just the job I want, which might mean working with and for a personal hero.
  • Being made the Pembroke College Middle Common Room Sommelier.
  • Black tie dinners.
  • Suit-wearing.
  • 4AM Kebabs (this is a debatable point, but McCoy’s, my local kebab van, is actually generally really good. Especially at 4AM when you need the grease.
  • The view from the back of Exeter College over Radcliffe Square.
  • The mass of really cool people that I get to work with– particularly my EP group.

That’s probably a good enough list, and enough time away from my studies. So much for my “I get one day a weekend” promise to myself. I did lie in until 11 and walked around for an hour today before getting to work… I know, poor poor pitiful me

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 Posted by at 12:38

  2 Responses to “No pictures”

  1. I managed to NOT get in a 500 word entry about myself which might someday be worth £150 from Amazon in exchange for doing this.-

    what does that mean?

  2. You are not up to date.

    Thanks for a night to remember, or at least what I remember of it. THe period where I sat in the street like an itinerant homelss person waiting for my body to produce vital conscious giving sugars is perhaps the low point.

    There were kebabs and lovely friends and beer and cava (which nearly killed me) and Thai food and we didn’t meet C3PO. And Tempurfoam TM. Follow this with a breakfast of ‘almost eggs benedict’ junior pancakes and seeing Chris Morris (comedy god) in the same cafe blowing cash on latte’s like it was Christmas and a rounded experience at the extremes of the experiential scale was had by all. But mainly by me. Hopefully you are recovering from the trauma.

    I will return!

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