So it has all started. Week 0 is a week before the actual lectures starts. But the zero has nothing to do with the amount of work that has been given. I have my outlook calendar full, I am keeping my appointment diary and have alarms set in my mobile and have notepads and lists. And still I am not able to do all the things I need to do. Never thought of time management so much and never had so many events coming from so many directions at the same point.
But before the week 0 started, here are some snaps of week -1.
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| Week -1 |
On week -1 we were going to pub every night after 8.30 and used to stay there till the pub closes (2300, 0000, 0100 depending on the pub). Every day almost 10 new people were joining us and we were overgrowing many pubs in Oxford. The last event was huuuugggeeee. I met many people than I remember there and all this was under the name of socializing which is considered as most essential part of MBA. We also celebrated a birthday in a pub. On Saturday we had a Oxford Pursuit event. They had divided us into teams of six. And they gave us a list of about 15 questions. The answers of these questions were scattered all over the Oxford town. It was like treasure hunt. We had to move all over the oxford to find the answer. It was a great event to break ice. But as I arrived early, I was knowing all in my group already. We tried hard but scored 17 out or 23. Three teams scored 23. Just for the record, each team had different set of questions…. In between these events couple of career workshops and some events took place. On Friday George David, CEO of UTC came for the seminar. I had a lot of expectations from him. But in vain. He just gave general presentation about UTC and all of sudden he started explaining how China is way better than India. Well UTC is in manufacturing company and in that sector China is lot better. But Many of us didn't really understood why he had to come all over from US to UK to tell people how China is better than India. That marked the completeness of a perfectly boring speech and total waste of time of many high profile people. On that note, attended few other seminars and let me tell you that everyone is talking about India and China.
Week 0
Week 0 started with inductions. Lot of them. About IT and Library and Healthcare and many more. The induction lasted for two days. Then had a fresher's fair on Wednesday. All the student unions in Oxford had their stall there ranging from sports to religion to film to wine tasting and everything else you could think of. Also there were some retailer's stall as well. Got quite a few free goodies there. Very rare think in UK.
Then many more career workshops. These guys are very career oriented. SAID has hired some people called as sector consultants. They are very high profile people like Harvard MBAs worked in McKinsey for 25 years and like that. You book a half an hour slot with them and they will advise you about your career. These guys are very experienced and British so unmistakably very rude. They are not afraid to say "Your resume is crap (bullshit)" to anybody if they think so. I have booked slot with Management Consultancy sector consultant on 18. Lets see. But many people are saying that getting a good job is very tough and many students including myself have started our research and search for job every before our first lecture starts. Oxford has very good reputation. To exemplify this, everyone from us got a letter from Roland Burger, personally signed by CEO about tell how good the company is and they hope that we would consider joining them. But despite this, very very very rarely any company higher more than 2 graduates from SAID. So competition is tough. And we have many horror stories from current students. So lets see what happens.
Also the class is divided into three sections of about 75 people. The classes will be section wise. Means max 75 people in lecture. Also we need to finish almost 14 assignments in my study group of 6 people. For this term the study group is decided by the school. My study group looks like this
Naveen from Infosys Pune, 8 years work ex.
Sumit, already PGDBM from IIM-L 2 years work ex
Hermit (female)– 2/3 generation Indian in UK – IBM consultant
Sirena (female) – US Oracle, 7 years
Marc – US, Entrepreneur
And me. So I am the kid in the group.
Then had a induction in Jesus college. Same things. But they gave an book of the rules for the examinations. Who could guess how many pages are there in this book???? Well 1100. Yes ELEVEN HUNDRED ONLY. It is a Oxford tradition and no one really reads it. But still. ELEVEN HUNDRES PAGES OF EXAMINATION RULES….. (see interesting story about it in wickipedia.. .you have to google for it…. Sorry). On Friday had my first formal lunch at Jesus. It was good to see all dressed people. And it was good break from MBA talk. Met many interesting people. Most of them doing Dphill which means they are world class experts in there subject. We have couple of more MBAs in Jesus and we were looking fools and very material in front of these guys. And there are many subjects even in Engineering for research than I knew of. Oxford puts you not only down to earth but many times burry you below earth. Outside just being in Oxford gives you a special status that you loose immediately after coming here. You are talented? Well not as talented as our student who found about gravity or about black holes and 45 more Nobel laureates . You were MS and CS in college? Very funny, we has 23 presidents from University and so on. The university is way to large to be overgrown by any individual or even a country. Yesterday had one more dinners with my mentor in parent. Each senior graduate is given 4-5 fresher graduates for mentoring. The senior is called as Parent, we are kids and 2-3 parents make a family. So had a family dinner and my parent cooked nice veg curry and rice for me. It was nice evening except an American loud girl.
Anyways. Spend most of the day today reading for the next lecture and finishing the pre lecture assignment in accounting. Remember I talked about theft in Oxford???? Well the seat of my bicycle got stolen yesterday night. I was lazy to park in cycle in enclosed shade of college so just locked in open cycle stand outside my room. And they stole JUST A SEAT. Damn it.
Nonetheless, the time we were calling as honeymoon weeks in Oxford is will be over in two hours and what is about to begin is very hard, very tiring, very intimidating, sometimes even frustrating but still the most exciting and most awaited year of my life. Apart from other career related and enjoyment expectations, I hope that I will get time to breath, eat, sleep (at least 4 hours a day) and write to you guys. On the similar note, hope you guys will have time and interest in reading.
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