Its the Little Things.....

When I was being interviewed, the inevitable 'why Oxford' came up. Of course having done my research, I gave the usual 'Oxford has a long and distinguished history with a reputation for educating leaders' among other stuff which sounded great then but had little practical implication. Having had a semester to experience this school, what have I grown to cherish? I would say its the little things like...

Collaboration

An awesome classmate facilitating an exam review session.











Getting a group of ultra competitive achievers to have such a collaborative outlook is no mean feat. Now I understand when admissions officers talk about 'fit'....there's such a huge collaborative spirit at this school that I feel that it would be tough for non-collaboratively minded people to fit in.

Lecturers
One of my classmates expressed my sentiment perfectly when he said 'I've never been in a class where the semester ended with a standing ovation for the lecturer; clearly we've all had an amazing eight weeks'. The standing ovation was for our Financial reporting professor who managed to make us love (or like at least) the course. To show our appreciation, we had shirts made with his catch phrase....

'Give Me Double Entry'.....


And it wasn't just him. Practically every single lecturer was amazing! Our Economics professor was so beloved by previous classes that a blog http://mungonomics.wordpress.com/ was created to capture some of his best quotes.

Our Decision and Data Analytics professor, in addition to helping me finally understand those regression tables, regularly has me in stitches with some phrases inserted in lecture notes;

History


The fact that the school is over 800 years old comes alive when you walk around the town and stumble upon signs like these;

Casually walked past the site where Boyle's Law was discovered and the microscope invented in the 1600s 

Bill Clinton was clearly up to no good in the 60s

Same for Bob Hawke. 2 pints in 11 seconds? That's no mean feat!

Looking back over the last semester, I am truly glad that I came here and wouldn't change a thing.....(and this overwhelming love for the school wasn't triggered by the fact that we were provided free beer today to commemorate the end of the term....ok maybe just a little bit)