Back to school

After the joy of a 3 week break, the length of which I hadn't enjoyed since my honeymoon more than 5 years ago, on Tuesday it was back to school. The week has been punctuated by a series of presentations to prepare us for our Entrepreneurship project (ours is likely to be either a Gluten free beer or a craft beer) and for our Trinity term electives. It has been good to catch up with my fellow classmates once again after their holidays and to hear their exotic stories of travels far and wide.

Although "nougth" week has not been very formal, the relaxed mood is sure to dissipate as we begin to realise the enormity of the workload that we're about to embark on this term, Hilary. We have a comparable number of courses to Michaelmas term (6) however have the added challenge of completing an Entrepreneurship project, which I will be embarking on with my classmates Ean Hernandez, Allan Vlah, Patrick Butler and Barry Neal.

I decided during the 1st part of the week to change one of my Hilary term electives, Finance II, and instead audit it and study Marketing, Culture and Society. Despite a wealth of reading material that I will need to plough through, I think I'm more likely to enjoy the study of MCS and also feel that I will still benefit from auditing Finance II (that is to say, you can sit in on the classes without the need to complete assignments or the exam!).

The difficulty of choosing electives was manifest again late this week when we sat through one and a half days of Trinity term electives. Not only are we faced with countless interesting choices, but so too must consider possible timetable clashes as well as the number of students admitted per class. I am struggling with my decision, principally because of the desire to challenge oneself, increase my knowledge and have fun whilst at the same time balancing the need to consider which of the courses will practically help me in my short and longer term career aspirations.

Whereas I initially thought entrepreneurship and social purpose courses would dominate my choices, I have been subsequently been impressed by the marketing lecturers and the subject content as well as some of the Strategy and Finance courses and then by courses such as Retailing, Business - State relations and Real Estate, each of which appeal purely because they are distinctive, different and interesting. I will no doubt have a few difficult days ahead weighing the relative pros and cons of each elective, as will my classmates I am sure.

Aside from the practical considerations of how to manage my workload, I must also embark this term on some serious career planning and searching. I have started my preparations but am convinced that this will also take a considerable amount of time. Whether I can maintain an involvement in rugby is at this stage a big question mark for me. I want to remain involved with my college, in the Bacchus wine society and to attend more of the Oxford Union speaker series than I was able last term, all of which convince me that time management will be paramount this term. The final challenge will be to orchestrate some events for the social and sports committee, like the Hawaiian night of last term (shown below). My goal is to organise a trivia night which is well attended and which provides a welcome respite from the hardships that lie ahead!