craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

And so my time at Oxford has come to an end. Little of it made its way onto these pages, but I plan to write many more articles about my Oxford experience in the months and years to come—it will be an enjoyable way to revisit my many fond memories.

This article, however, like its predecessor Et in Arcadia Ego, is intended as a more personal retrospective. As the titles' allusions make clear (to anyone who recognises them, anyway!), this is an article I have been planning to write for some time.

It was a life-changing year for me. It was life-changing by design, of course—both the Oxford MBA experience, and my own personal quest that brought me to Oriel were conceived of with the express purpose of creating a life-changing experience. But the fact that it was expected in no way diminishes the fact that it is true. This was the best year of my life.

In my own case, this is a particularly meaningful step personally, since when I left university after my last master's degree, it had been the worst year of my life. Erasing that memory—with a better university, a better college, a better religion—had been one of my great motivations in going back to school. Had this year not gone well, those demons would perhaps still haunt me. Yet, as it happens, they are well and truly vanquished, and clichéd as it may sound, it really does feel like a new dawn.

In that previous article I think I did a good job of listing the types of events that punctuated the lifestyle I embraced at Oxford, and I kept it up at much the same pace through Hilary and Trinity terms. I do not wish to repeat that exercise again here, as by now the list of world-class experiences, celebrities, and privileged places and things I have seen has grown so long, that it would be impossible to go over it without sounding intolerably boastful. Oxford's reputation is well-deserved. A year ago I would not have dared to dream that I would have sat in the London Athenæum sipping tea as the guest of a former librarian at Eton College, or stomped divots at the Guards' Polo Club mere metres away from Prince Phillip, Christie Brinkley, and Petra Němcová.

Education, however, was the true purpose, and it continued to be phenomenal right up until the very end. The capstone course, which took place last week, was exceptionally well put together. While I had expected a fairly uninteresting chain of motivational speeches—punctuated however by great social events such as a garden party at Rhodes House and a dinner at Blenheim Palace—in fact the talks we had really did bring together everything we had learned in the MBA in a profound, meaningful way. When at our end of course ceremony we were challenged to go out and change the world, I truly felt that this time, I was not listening to mere platitudes. Oxford has given us the knowledge and the means to do just that.

For my own part, in the near future my family will occupy the greater part of my attention. My lovely wife was extremely patient, and had to make a lot of sacrifices, in order for me to pursue this course. My son missed me deeply, and I him. As I leave Oxford I could not be happier, and I am profoundly grateful to them, my parents, my recommenders, and my friends who all contributed so much to letting me have this wonderful year. It is a debt I hope to repay, with interest.