Christmas vacation in Germany

On Tuesday we hit the road back to Germany.

Using the EuroTunnel it took us only seven something hours for the 610 km from Oxford to Essen which seems to be ok if one considers the flexibility we have during our stay by having our car with us.

We will spend our time here visiting family and friends and most important: relaxing from an exhausting three months period.

Stay tuned for updates :-)

one year ago...

Last year on Dec. 19th 2007 I got the offer from SAID Business School to be a member of the class of 2008 with this email:

Dear Sebastian

I am delighted to confirm the decision of the MBA Committee to offer you a place on the 2007 – 2008 programme. Dr Blackmon was very impressed when she spoke to you for your interview and the MBA Committee has agreed that you meet the very high standard expected of an Oxford Student.

We hope very much that you will accept the Committee’s offer and join the 2007-2008 class. We aim to welcome another class of around 220 to the next MBA, allowing each student to benefit from close supportive and constructive relationships with Faculty.

We look forward to watching over the next few months how the profile of our incoming class develops. To give you an idea of the profile structure, the current class is made up of 214 students from over 40 countries, confirming the School’s reputation as a truly international centre of learning.

You will shortly receive your official offer letter >from Colin Mayer, Dean of the Said Business School, and Stephan Chambers, MBA Director. These, along with your offer pack, will be sent in the post by DHL Connect to the address on your application form; if you prefer for your pack to be sent to another address please let me know as soon as possible.

The offer pack will contain details of your log on to our Class of 2007 - 2008 website, and discussion forum. The website is designed to help you with the practicalities of coming to Oxford. This has information from the next steps of securing your place onto the programme to traveling to Oxford. You will also find details of what is happening at the School and hopefully you will get a sense of what an exciting year is ahead of you. The discussion forum is a chance for you to get to know your new class mates straight away and chat to some of the students on the current programme.

We very much hope you will become a member of the 2007 – 2008 Oxford MBA class and look forward to welcoming you to Oxford and the course.

Please feel free to contact me directly by email or phone should you have any queries or questions.

I look forward to talking to you soon.

Sally

Sally Webb

MBA Admissions Coordinator

Wow, I remember the feelings: pride, fear, gratefulness, excitement, confusion, eagerness...

Now, one year later and after the first term gratefulness is the prevailing feeling. Gratefulness especially that Klaudia is such a strong and encouraging wife, supporting me from the very first second of the MBA idea and for sure the big reason I finally made it into the program.

Thank you so much for being the pillar of strength for me, for keeping me committed, working, learning, for having an open ear and a good advise and for joining me on this trip.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
** Marcel Proust (1871 - 1922) **

In addition to that a big thank you to our families and friends who are interested in what we are doing and who support us in completely different ways. I feels good to know there is someone who really cares!

Furthermore I am grateful for all the great experiences I had so far: with great lecturers, prominent speakers and classmates from more than 40 nations, some of them with the potential of becoming good friends.

DONE!!!

Wow, what a week! Six exams in four days but now: finished for this term.

The one hour finance was though today. The trip to the exam and back to the city in a pink stretch limo hilarious.

And the post exam drinks at the turf (students do that for 800 years now) legendary.



We had Champagne and Bloody Marry instead of breakfast and are now on our way for the evening part of the celebration.



Great weather in Oxford these days... cold but sunny.

Only one more

After another study session yesterday evening with the big aim of getting all the DEM models in my head and the three hours exam this morning there is only one evening of studying and one exam left in this term.

Yesterday's evening was fun. We did an experiment to find out if the consumption of polish vodka can increase learning aptitude ...

The results are not yet released - we will see :-)

Another snapshot of my learning mates Katy and Nick:

The exam today was difficult for me. From the total three hours we had one hour of reading time for a case study and then got our three questions with another two hours to answer them. The case was nearly twenty pages long which definitely is a lot for people not native in English. We will see how it was in February...

This afternoon and evening is reserved for the final studies for Finance tomorrow...
The whole group is crazy about finishing the term and starting the celebrations. So am I :-)

2/3 completed

Puh, Decision Science was another hard one. Really good, that we spent so much time on the preparation. It is unbelievable how fast 90 minutes can pass by when you maltreat your head and your calculator with standard deviations, standard errors, p-values, autocorrelation and all that stuff... Nearly got caught in a trap on question 5 by overseeing that it has way more than letter a) i-iii ... Lucky me, that I realized it early enough...

Attention: Funny evening with preparation for tomorrow (developing effective managers) and Thursday (finance) approaching...

50% done

With finishing the Strategy exam only a couple of minutes ago I'm done with 50% of this term's exams... Yippee!

Strategy seemed to be fair. We had to analyze Lego's competitive position and I found that having been an avid Lego user as a child did unfortunately not really help answering the questions.
Hard to predict results for this one but when it positively correlated with the pain in my writing hand after 75 minutes of shorthand it could be at least a pass ... Keeping fingers crossed.

Will do a bit of Decision Science practice now, take a nap and then head to the Examination hall again for number four :-)

Strategy revision

After five hours of strategy revision I'm not sure whether I will be able to remember all that stuff Prof. Strategy tried to drum into my head tonight...
I'll know in less than 12 hours... :-)

Prof. Strategy's reaction to me repeating the "Four degrees of diversification"

(first) Katy with what always helps: coffee
(second) crowded study place...

Exams Part II

Yeah! Two done - four to come...
Financial Reporting was harder than what we had seen in the sample exams but manageable in the end. Hopefully not too many stupid mistakes :-)

Will spend the evening studying for tomorrow's Strategy and Decision Science and for Wednesday's Developing effective managers. And when there is time left tonight I may even do another Finance Exam in preparation for Thursday! Yippee! :-)

Exams

Wow, how fast can one hour pass by?
We took our first exam in Managerial Economic this morning. One hour with "price discrimination", "Nash Equilibrium" and "Monopoly" :-)
The exams seemed to be fair. We will see what I think when results are published (not before February...)

By the way: Did you ever take an exam in a black suite, white shirt, white bow tie and the funny gown? Feels a bit strange but is fun ;-)

At 2.30 pm we will take Financial Reporting... Keep tuned for updates :-)

running again

Seeing the last two posts one might think I don't have other things to do than running. With exams next week much closer than I'd like them to be this is obviously not true. But running has the big advantage of being an exercise one can do nearly everywhere and at every time. Therefore it can be easily fit into a learning schedule (if one has one...). Furthermore it helps relaxing, taking a break from all the academic stuff we are dealing with these days...

For this reason and with the European MBA Olympics (MBAT) in next year’s spring we planned to have a first run with the SAID Business School’s running team. Heavy studying, rain and the early time are hopefully the only reasons why only three avid runners turned up...

We did a nice run of 1:15h (here is the route we took) and even managed to take a picture at the University Parks Sports Grounds in front of a sign remembering Roger Bannister running a mile in less than 4 minutes ever.

Daniel who took the picture is unfortunately not on the photo...

So... Enough for the moment... Back to Managerial Economic, Financial Reporting and all my other good friends. There is still lots of work to do...

Running in Oxford

Today was my day off and beside starting with the revision for the exams I managed to go for a run. (Have a look at my route...)
We have great weather these days and since I took my camera with me you can enjoy some great impressions of the river Isis ...



and me ;-)



Boathouse of a rich college:




and not so rich college (3 sharing...):



Christ Church College:



more pictures HERE...

Just a quick note

Since times on Oxford are really busy at the moment, here comes only a very short posting to show that I'm still around...

We are in week 7 already which means that it is only one more week of lectures (!). In week nine we have "revision week" to prepare for the exams which will take place in week 10.
The schedule for the exams was released a couple of days ago:

Monday Dec. 10

Managerial Economics (1h)
Financial Reporting (1.5h)

Tuesday Dec. 11

Strategy (2.75h)
Decision Science (1.5h)

Wednesday Dec. 12

Developing effective managers (3h)

Thursday Dec. 13

Finance (1h)


This week is "assignment" week. We have 4 papers due within 8 days including the two heavyweights Financial Reporting (3,500 words) and Managerial Economice (3,000 words). The other two are Decision Science (excel based exercise on scenario / sensitivity analysis) and Finance (project evaluation with NPV, APV and tax adjusted WACC)

Here is a picture taken during our Decision Science workshop on Monday where we were expected to do most of our assignment work...

thinking - dreaming - posing

Well...

Enough for the moment. There is a lot more work to do today... Getting the assignment for Decision Science finalized, writing a first draft on eBay's business model in the UK in terms of products and services offered and making the Finance spreadsheet so beautiful that we get a distinction this time...

In one of the following postings we will cover: Dinner with friends at our place, visit of my parents, dinner with friends at Gino's, Silicon valley at Oxford and so forth... :-)

Bright side of the rain

Yesterday afternoon!

Halloween in the call room

My students and I had to work on Halloween day. So I decided to decorate the room a little bit and we had a best costumes contest. It was really fun!

3/5 of week 4 done…

I take some time on this Wednedsday evening to catch up a bit with my blog entries.

Things I haven’t told you so far include matriculation, formal dinner at my college, SBS photo shooting and dinner with 3i’s CEO Philip Yea.

Trying to keep the chronological order I start with my first formal dinner at St. Hugh’s College. The dinner is called formal since everyone is supposed to wear appropriate clothes. This can be a challenging expression in Oxford, as different occasions demand different “appropriate clothes”. As a graduate student our formal dress for all University related events is the so called sub fusc. It consists of black suit with black shoes and black socks, white shirt with white bow tie in combination with a gown and mortarboard. Have a look at Wikipedia for more information.

Fortunately the dress code for our dinner was just formal which means suit for the boys and evening dress for the girls. Here are some pictures from the drinks reception before the dinner.

Although St. Hugh’s is said to be a poor College we have our own wine J

Curiously I was placed at the high table were normally only fellows and their guests sit. The high table is another funny Oxford tradition, being a table that is really separated from the normal dining-hall by being located of a podium overlooking the hall. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures at the high table. In the middle of the high table sits the Principal who officially opens the dinner with some Latin words. Before he has finished no one is allowed to sit... 800 years of tradition :-)

We had a really nice evening over a three course meal and finished the evening with a beer in the College bar.

On Friday Oct. 12^th we had our first happy hour. Every Friday from 5:30 to 7:30 pm our common room serves fair priced bear and wine and the dining hall offers take away food. Following a good start at the common room we went to the Turf Tavern to celebrate the first real week of studying. More pictures here...

Saturday morning we then had to meet at our Colleges for matriculation, which means in the broadest sense registration with the University. After a group picture in full sub fusc we went to the Sheldonian Theatre under the guidance of a senior member of the college. Since all Colleges have their matriculation on the same day, the city was full of perfectly dressed students. The ceremony itself took only several minutes but is for sure another nice tradition. More pictures...

Here is a small video I recorded...

Since our time slot for the ceremony was early in the morning some of the St. Hugh’s MBAs had decided to have breakfast together. This turned out to be a bit difficult since most of the pubs down town don’t serve breakfast and a lot of the cafes were already crowded when we arrived. Finally we ended in a place some minutes outside the city centre and I had my first full English breakfast consisting of eggs, sausage, mushrooms, grilled tomato, bacon, and black pudding which turned out to be “Blutwurst”. This interesting and obviously healthy, fat free and low calories dish is served with buttered toast and tasted really good :-)

On Wednesday Philip Yea, CEO of Private Equity and Venture Capital investor 3i gave a talk at the business school. He spoke about current challenges in the private equity market and how established companies deal with that. Following his speech and the common drinks reception I was invited to participate in a formal dinner with Philip, our dean and a number of interesting people thereunder a McKinsey Partner, the principal of Brasenose College, a representative of Rolls Royce and a small number of MBA students. I had a really good time although cooking is not one of the British’s strength :-)

Here are some more pictures from last week’s happy hour. More pictures...

And from the photoshooting for the SBS class picture... More pictures...

Sunday 21st October

Sebastian and I managed to have some minutes together and we started this beautiful autumn day with a lovely walk through the University Park – every Sunday should start like this!