Collections and Consultancy

After little more than two weeks back at Oxford, I have finally managed to sit down and force myself to type out my first blog entry since returning to school. To those of you eagerly awaiting my next installment since my last post back in November, I most sincerely apologize. But at long last I have now returned with yet another brief update on my life at Oxford.

But first, I should briefly mention the various activities of my Christmas vacation for those amongst my readers who might be interested. The obvious highlights include the numerous holiday festivities: I spent both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my extended family, celebrated New Year’s up at my lake house in Wisconsin with cousins and Rachel, and of course took part in the annual gingerbread-house building ceremony.

For my British readers: this is a very historic American holiday tradition

Delicious food, presents, and joyous times were had by all. In additional to celebrating the holidays, I mostly occupied myself by spending time with Rachel, including meeting her grandparents, catching up with friends, relaxing whenever possible, and eventually studying. Yes, studying over Christmas vacation.

For those of you who have neither familiarized yourselves with the Oxford system nor talked to me enough to hear me complain about it, the prospect of studying over vacation might seem simply ludicrous. Unfortunately, at the beginning of each term at Oxford, students are required to take exams on the material they learned prior to leaving for vacation, presumably to ensure that we don’t forget everything over our six-week breaks and end up failing the year-end tests that actually matter.

And that brings me now to the actual start of my time back here in Oxford, upon which I almost immediately had to take these two exams, called Collections, one in philosophy and one in microeconomics with a length of three hours and two hours fifteen minutes respectively. Furthermore, these tests consisted entirely of free-response and essay style questions, which frankly made me miss filling in the multiple-choice bubbles of my high school days.

Ah, Scantron, how I miss ye.

Predictably, these exams were completely exhausting. And although I certainly won’t announce my results here, I will simply say that they turned out not quite as well as I had hoped going in, better than I expected after finishing, and will certainly help me to score higher next time around. Afterwards, I spent the next couple days doing absolutely nothing; it was wonderful.

However, you might note that earlier I said that I “almost immediately” took these exams upon my return to Oxford. Well, that’s not just because I arrived in advance to give myself a bit of time to settle in, but also because I did in fact have yet another ordeal scheduled shortly beforehand that did in fact take place immediately upon my arrival.

Over the course of my vacation, I was frequently visiting the Oxford Careers Service webpage, waiting to see when they would post the international summer internship opportunities and whether there might be one in Chicago I could snatch up. There was not. Nonetheless, during my time spent on that website, I eventually came to notice another opportunity that the Careers Service was offering the following term: The Student Consultancy.

The Student Consultancy requires its logo to accompany any/all mentions of its name.

This program essentially recruits students, groups them into consultancy teams, and assigns them Oxford small businesses, charities, and like organizations as clients with real-life problems to be solved over the course of term. Ever eager as I am to make myself more employable, particularly in light of the lost Chicago-Oxford internship, I quickly sent in my résumé.

Shortly thereafter, I received a reply stating that I had been advanced to the second application stage, which required me to come to the Careers Service office for an evaluation the day of my arrival. So upon arriving at my room after a nine-hour flight and an hour and a half bus ride, I opened up my suitcases, changed into my suit, and walked on over. Luckily, the evaluation was not incredibly intensive; everyone sat with a group at a table with a summary of a different business problem, we discussed said problem amongst ourselves, and then briefly presented how we would approach the problem to the rest of the assembled applicants.

Fortunately enough, I succeeded past the second stage as well, and I began my work with The Student Consultancy. Within two weeks, I have undergone some minor consultancy training, been assigned my first-choice project with the Oxford City Council with three other students, met with the client, and begun to work on a rather intense project. In brief, the Oxford City Council Communities and Neighbourhoods (British spelling is weird) Team has developed a quality of life survey that it wants us to evaluate, refine, and pilot. Although progress has been a bit haphazard so far, things seem to be coming together at this point, and I’m very excited to see how it progresses.

Although I could write plenty more, I believe that’s enough for now, but I will provide a quick synopsis of some of the other things going on with me. This term I’m studying political theory, a bit more microeconomics, and macroeconomics, all of which are quite interesting subjects that I’m enjoying significantly so far. In fact, I have my first macroeconomics lecture this Monday, which I’m very much looking forward to not only due to the subject matter but also because the lecturer is the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England. Furthermore, I have actually begun in earnest my study of German that I said I was going to start last term, I am continuing with my involvement in affairs at the Oxford Union, and I recently became interested in a writing group here called The Failed Novelists. All in all, everything is going splendidly, and I shall have more to write soon.