craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

And so Michaelmas term (the first trimester of the Oxford year) has drawn to a close. I was extremely fortunate, moreover, in having left Oxford promptly on the day following my last exam, as the snow was just beginning to fall—had I been on a train even six hours later, there would have been a very real possibility that I would even now still be stuck in England. Instead, I have benefited from the quiet repose of a long, snowy weekend at home with none of the stress and pressure that accompanied the end of term.

So, my first term at Oxford is finished. It was a productive one. Taking stock of the term, I see that I completed all six compulsory courses, audited three more voluntary ones (perhaps a bit much!), participated regularly in two extracurricular societies, visited the Oxford Union on a weekly basis, and was elected to, and served on, the MCR committee as my college's treasurer. I also found time to visit all 44 of Oxford's colleges and halls, dined in eight of them (a number I hope to better next term), and still attended formal hall at Oriel on average at least twice a week.

I attended a concert at the Holywell music room, the oldest concert hall in Europe (in which Handel and Haydn have previously performed), where I heard a Stradivarius violin played to its limits. (Although the private concert I received, from a friend playing the grand piano in Oriel's marvelous music room, will be the memory I will hold to far longer.) I saw firsthand a copy of Shakespeare's first folio, the Catullus 'O' manuscript, and the Oxford Juvenal (those being three of the rarest books in the world, and rarely shown even to Oxford students).

I heard founders and chairmen/CEOs from Tommy Hilfiger, BP, Twitter, LinkedIn, Creative Commons, the UFC, and the president of Albania. I drank ale in the pub where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis shared manuscripts, and had a pint in the place where Bill Clinton did not inhale. In London, I was able to visit the Royal Society, the Reform Club, and the Travellers' Club. One week I dined with two titled "Sir and Lady" couples on two consecutive nights. I was roped into one of Oxford's infamous 'Drinking Societies', and a number of black tie dinners.

And what's more, I managed to squeeze all of this in only on the weekdays, as every weekend I returned home to France. Happily, going home every weekend went far better than I would have imagined (and was actually a great help to me, in forcing me to sit down for a few hours, so that I regularly had a quiet, dedicated time to catch up on my course readings!).

I have learned a lot. The quality of teaching exceeded my expectations, but above and beyond the coursework, I have learned far more about myself than I ever thought possible on such a course. (Not least because my previous master's degree had a pretty considerable introspective component, such that I didn't think I had that much about myself left to learn.) Thus I really see this MBA as providing me not only with technical knowledge, but with truly valuable experience and self-knowledge as well—something that in the end will probably turn out to be far more important for my future success.

I have met a lot of amazing people in my classmates, both fellow MBAs and those studying any number of subjects at Oriel. Unfortunately, as the preceding sort of implies, I have spread myself pretty thin over the first term—which I don't regret, as time flies so fast here that it is necessary to make the most of it—but high on my list of priorities for next term will be trying to make more time for getting to know people better. (The other big priority should be getting more serious about my next career steps.)

So, reflecting back on what is done leads one naturally to consider all that has been left undone. The one consolation that we have, in the shock of realising that our MBA is already 1/3 finished, is that we do still have two more terms which, in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, we can hope to address our weaknesses in. All the same, I am immensely proud of what I managed to squeeze into one term at Oxford, and at this point I honestly do feel that I am getting the most out of this brief, unique, experience. Given how high the expectations I had set myself were, that is no mean feat.