Fountain at Christ Church

The Chapel at Brasenose

The Deer Park at Brasenose

Brasenose with the Radcliffe Camera in the background

The last of the Bodleian

More of the Bodleian

The Bodleian

The Bodleian

Capstone and End-of-Course Ceremony

Capstone week came and went incredibly quickly. The lectures and group work kept us busy almost all day and the week culminated in group presentations to one of the three streams to which the respective groups were assigned. I'm unsure of the percentage of my class that will actually use scenarios in the working world, but I imagine learning the process was useful for future consultants. Perhaps there are others that will use it in different functions. In any case it was an interesting exercise that taught us the fundamental building blocks for and benefits of long-term scenario analysis. It required out-of-the box thinking that I would not have done otherwise, and others mentioned similar sentiments.

The week was also incredibly social with MBAs at a different venue nearly every night, celebrating our final days together. On one occasion a pub owner closed his pub around midnight and came across the street to a pub to find 30+ MBAs toasting the end of the year. He invited us back across the street where he re-opened his pub and offered us all free tequila. We also frequented the usual venues until families started to trickle into town for the End-of-Course Ceremony. Then we invited them along. Other highlights included a Japanese friend and his wife making sushi for a group, a girls-only viewing of Mama Mia (the movie,) and one of the horses in Port Meadow having a colt who followed me as I ran along the path that crosses the meadow. More than once I had to stop to get him to turn around and go back with the other horses. This was not easy as he was really cute and I wouldn't have minded him coming along for a bit. 

Fortunately, my parents and Casey made the trip to Oxford for the ceremony. I took Casey as my "date" to the black tie dinner on Friday, which was a fun night of food, drinks, dancing, and lots of picture-taking. Audra and Bradley joined us for the End-of-Course Ceremony on Saturday, which was no small feat considering they had to leave Houston a day early due to the pending hurricane. The Ceremony marked the end of the coursework, but the official graduation takes place by college and requires students to sign-up nearly a year in advance. Many MBAs will graduate in abstentia next year, though it would be neat to be part a traditional Oxford graduation ceremony. For me it was great to have so many people attend this event, particularly because it was so far away.

Following the ceremony we went to Christ Church where one of my Michelmas-term (and Hilary and Trinity-term) study group members had reserved the GCR for friends and family. The GCR was Albert Einstein's room while he studied at Oxford so it holds some historical significance. Overall it was a great day, and the British sun even graced us with its presence for most of it. 

I plan to write an additional post with reflections on the year as a whole, but for now suffice it to say that Sebastian was right in his after-dinner speech that followed the black-tie dinner. Walking around Oxford among 800-year old buildings and taking it all in: the architecture, the atmostphere, the relationships you're fostering, the education you're receiving, is always humbling. And the simple act of walking around reflecting on these things is one of only a few things that never gets old.