A Week In The Life Of An Oxford MBA Student

What exactly do Oxford MBA students do? Do they spend all week at the pub? Or in the Library? I'll answer this with a typical MBA phrase.....'It Depends'. Some people focus on academics and spend most of their extra time doing 'book' related stuff, others focus on sports and are almost always on a boat somewhere, rowing for their colleges or Oxford as an institution. Some recognize the importance of networking and focus on the social side of things. The vast generality of the student population sort of lie in the middle of those three extremes....attend all (most) classes, hand in assignments on time (only just), do all (most) of the pre-assigned readings, attend a couple of parties/balls/dinners a week, attend 2-3 career events a week and listen to a couple of debates at the Oxford Union. 

I would attempt to paint a more explicit picture of life here (admittedly through my somewhat limited perspective) by going through my week thus far and my scheduled activities over the next couple of days;

Sunday 

8-11am: Had breakfast, worked on my part of the Finance 2 assignment, replied emails.

11-1pm: Met up with other members of my Finance 2 group to discuss and agree on answers to the questions.

1 - 5.30pm: Headed to the common room at SBS to work on the financial model for my entrepreneurship project and simultaneously watch Arsenal beat (destroy) our rivals Tottenham 5-2 with fellow Arsenal fans Ananth, Haben and Sreekanth and poor Tottenham fan Monesh. Also caught a glimpse of the penalty shootout victory by Liverpool in the Carling cup final.

6.30-10pm: Entrepreneurship project brainstorming meeting.

10-1am: Sort out dinner, check emails, send emails, check careersconnect (our in house careers portal) for interesting job postings, watch an old episode of two and a half men. 

Monday

8.45am-12.15pm: Developing Effective Managers class....I had to do push ups in front of the class to help the professor illustrate a point about obedient staff.

12.30-3pm: Hung around the common room to work on the planning for the forthcoming Private Equity forum and read the cases for the next day's Operations Management class.

3-7pm: Went home to grab lunch and rest for a bit.

7-10.30pm: Entrepreneurship project (EP) brainstorming session.

11-3am: Sort out dinner, check emails, send emails, check  careersconnect for interesting job postings, watch a movie (bad idea...forgot I had a football training session at 7am)

Tuesday

6.30am: Alarm goes off for football training session....I can only lift my hands enough to press the snooze button.

6.45am: Alarm goes off again....snooze (you get the picture...Captain Alejandro won't be happy but....reset alarm to 9am)

10-12am: Head to school for planning meeting for PE Forum and to go over school notes from last week.

12.30-1.15pm: Planning meeting for European finals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition (we would host the finals on March 10th)

1.30-4.45pm: Operations Management lecture

5-7pm: Light research on potential speakers for PE forum

9-12.30am : Dinner with friends (including an alumni from a couple of years ago)...awesome Indian/Malaysian food and lots of wine.

Wednesday

8.45-12.15pm: Finance 2 lecture

12.30-1.30pm: Grab lunch, hang out in common room

1.30-4.45pm: Macro-economics lecture (with the brilliant Oren Sussman)

6-8pm: Operations Management review class....selflessly facilitated by two of my course mates (Wiebke Pahl and Satya Amu)

9pm: Sort out dinner, check emails, send emails, check  careersconnect  for interesting job postings....slept early (about midnight).

Thursday

9.30-11.30am: PE Forum planning meeting with Faculty adviser

12.30-2pm: PE Forum planning meeting with the school's events co-ordinator....dashed off to catch the last half of a Macro-economics review session facilitated by another brilliant classmate (Bryce Eakin)

2.15-3.30pm: PE Forum planning meeting with a second faculty adviser...

3-6pm: Send emails...Happy hour (all drinks at the school bar at half price) started at 5pm..had a few drinks and had a football team meeting in the common room to plan this weekend's tournament in London. Write this blog post.....

Tomorrow (Friday), I'm scheduled to have an EP Meeting with our supervisor, have a brainstorming session with my other EP group members, be part of a current student panel at the school's open day, have a meeting about a Macro-Economics assignment, be part of a 'town hall' style meeting with my fellow MBA students, and end the day at a friend's flat (a fellow MBA) who just got a grill and wants to host a barbeque. Then of course, I'll head off to London to participate in the LBS Tackle Africa football tournament where we hope to win the cup....

Of course, not all weeks are like this as some have a little more social activity than this week as had. There are also regular dinners (I have one next week), balls and hockey games to watch (Oxford plays Cambridge this weekend with three MBA students part of the team). 

There are also conferences (I am attending the London School of Economics Emerging Markets conference next week).

Juggling all these activities can be tough...but would I have it any other way? You bet I won't.....

Choices....

Reading through my last post again, its clear those were the words of a sleep deprived man, driven over the edge by excess caffeine. I am happy to report that I am back within acceptable blood/caffeine levels after a weekend without any coffee! Its the beginning of week 7 and the end of term is within sights...scary stuff! The MBA is definitely all about choices...What do I mean?

Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford
This without doubt is one of the headline events at the school....leading practitioners within the technology space come together to discuss. Its a great opportunity for students to network with leading lights at firms like Google, Linkedin, Facebook etc. Some students even got to do what's called speed dating....a quick one on one meeting with one of the executives. But I decided to skip it and finalize my other assignments to free up space to study for exams. Although there are many potential benefits of sitting through the event, I feel that given my objectives, my time would be better spent at the library. Tough and potentially wrong choice but one that needed to be made. Meanwhile, another classmate is currently at the CBI conference in London, listening to David Cameron and the Turkish president give speeches....

Picking Electives for Next Term
We have to select two from six electives next term; Branding & Communications, Finance 2, Macroeconomics, Global Strategy, Rethinking Business and Strategy & Innovation. Now the question is, do I stick with what I am familiar with (Finance & Macroeconomics), specialise in finance, and deepen my knowledge of the subjects, or attempt to take on fresh knowledge with some of the other courses? After thinking long and hard, I decided to specialize in Finance and choose both electives. I figured that those two courses are most likely to improve my on the job skills. Thankfully, we have the option to audit (sit in on classes without taking examinations) an additional course, so I'll probably audit Branding & Communications.


Entrepreneurship Project
Here at Oxford, we're mandated to form teams of five to come up with a business idea and draw up a business plan for it during Hillary Term. There are loads of ideas to choose from as classmates and external bodies alike pitch their ideas to students. One of the great things about being in a school like Oxford is the interaction with other departments. Its arguably in this area that the benefits shine through as people come from different departments to pitch awesome sounding ideas to students. They'll most likely have invented something great and just need MBA students to draw up a plan to make it a viable business! Its tough to choose because of course, some of these ideas might eventually become full fledged companies! My instinct however is to do something different, something i've never done before...the easiest thing to do would be to do a finance related project, but in this case i would love to explore previously unchartered territories. So when I saw a classmate post the possibility of an EP in the sustainable solutions area (I'm being deliberately vague), I decided to explore the opportunity...lets see how that goes!

Having handed in the marketing assignment on time (Oxford are extremely strict about time limits. Any form of lateness leads to deductions....a classmate ran from the business school, assignment in hand at after printing his work at 11.50 am (with a 12 noon deadline).....I feared for him initially, but he clearly has the skills of a long distance runner as he made it to the High Street based Examination schools in 10 minutes), like good MBAs, we celebrated by heading to the swankiest joint in Oxford 'The Randolph Hotel' for a black tie celebration of a classmates's birthday...

Beginning of the night...looking all civilized

Later on....looking less than civilized...yes, the assignment was that difficult!

Zombie Diaries....

Sitting in marketing class, listening to people talk about pricing Louis Vutton bags and asking myself...'Bayo, when last did you have a meal?'. To my horror, I realize I haven't had a meal in close to 24 hours! To make matters worse, I'm not even hungry! The assignment submission deadlines are here in full force with the marketing assignment (60% of total grade) due on Friday. Panic! Shock! as MBAs discover previously unexplored segments of the library....a friend even inundated me with tales of strange ticking sounds he heard in the library one night as he tried to figure out how to price curled metal. He'd either had too much coffee to drink or the library's haunted by the soul of some poor MBA who wakes up screaming 'Correlation! Covariance! Help me Tomo! I don't know double entry!'. And it gets worse....i project a dramatic increase in 'sleep rates' during class from next week.....won't the lecturer notice? MBA's are skilled in various facets of life....well disguised sleep should be a piece of cake....we should definately have a 'best sleeping technique in class' category at our annual Sylvester awards....I think i know already who would win this award!

Ok...mini break over....back to trying to figure out how.....gasp! The lecturer's looking at me! I think she's going to ask me a question......Phew! False alarm....