Last paper done...holiday time!
Well I did it...I completed my last MBA assignment, excluding our final summer individual project. It was actually an interesting one, as I mentioned I quite liked my global macroeconomics elective, and I had to write about the effects of globalisation on capitalism, the economic unification of Europe, and government policy approaches to growth rates.
Other assignments in the past month included analysing the pros and cons of an IPO, describing the increase in social entreprenuership, analysis of an advertising campaign, and arguing the role of CSR in modern business.
I am off on holiday this week, after an MBA assessment day tomorrow in London, very excited for adventures in Croatia, more soon...
MBA marriage
Today was a magical Cambridge wedding experience- our classmate Jan married his sweetheart Elsje (hope they don't mind being cited on my blog!) in the same fairy-tale ambience at Queen's College as existed at Queen's for the
May Ball I previously described. The ceremony was at Queen's chapel, which was quite a setting, and interesting how the guests sat in the traditional choir rows, so that we were facing one another across the long narrow chapel instead of facing forward, and Jan's sister sang at one point which was very touching. The reception and party were held at Sidney Sussex College, my college, in the gardens, and were also very nice. The party was great fun, one of those weddings where everyone seems to be having a great time honestly and lots of dancing and smiles. They also had a memory book where everyone brought photos and memories and wrote best wishes into a few albums, which was a great momento idea for them. Very nice day overall.
Fireworks time (a bit blurry)
Swings
Courtyard in Queen's
Entering Queen's Ball
Pre-Ball cocktail hour
Awoken from the dead
yes I have arisen. It is 3pm-ish, post-Queen's Ball. The sun is glaring through the windows again, and I have the urge to eat breakfast and lunch all rolled into one. Not that I didn't eat a ton last night...
So, the Ball. It was quite a surreal experience I must say. And a great time. Looking back, with the drinks and the haziness of being sleepy, and the music and lights and strange experience of seeing the sun rise circa 4am, it all begins to feel like a mystical dream, a bit reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. I'm sure that's what they are aiming for, given that the ball is set in historic
Queen's college so you are running around in long ball gowns and tuxedos in a setting from the 14 and 1500's with classical music and canapes and fireworks.
Ryan and I met other friends at classmate Rory's veranda at
Sidney Sussex College (also my college) for drinks and snacks before hand. You could have bought dining tickets for the ball for an extra 30 quid each, but we had heard of the endless food available all night and decided to forgo the additional dining experience. So we enjoyed champagne and music, olives and hordeurves, and a few of our classmate's parents even came by for the pre-ball cocktails since they were in town visiting.
Then off to the ball, which took over the entire college. I suppose if you were living in college you would just HAVE to go, otherwise there would be no sleeping. There were at least 4 or 5 different large courtyards, a garden area along the river, and many old rooms with different goings-on. There were many tents with musical acts playing, a string quartet, jazz, a girl singing Tori Amos tunes, hip hop, ballroom dancing, dj's playing popular dance music, the
Kaiser Chiefs, a band called
Sleepwalker that did a great job of keeping me awake for the final hour, and more.
The food and drink were everywhere and endless, which was helpful when trying to stay awake all night. I saw steaks, crepes, doughnuts, hot dogs, ice cream, cotton candy, oysters, oreo banana milkshakes (?), pizza, fajitas, fondue, strawberries and cream, mojitos, champagne, chambord, beer and wine, other fruity cocktails and of course the vodka luge shaped like (take your pick) a male or female body. There was also a casino, a hypnotist, comedians, carnival games and rides, Sheesha, massage, and of course the fireworks show.
It was an amazing experience, and great fun with so many MBAs from the class there, everywhere we went we bumped into more friends, one classmate one the casino grand prize of the night, and many of us stayed long enough to take part in the Survivor Photo at 5:45 AM before walking slowly home in the hot sunshine. After catching up on 7 or 8 hours of sleep, I can look back with fond memories...
May Balls
An all night affair
Hmm, when was the last time I stayed up until 6 am? A crazy club night in London? Grad nite at Disney World, senior year of high school? Sleepovers when I was a young teenager? Not even sure.
Well tonight's the big night, wish me luck.
Queen's May Ball. These 'May Balls' at Cambridge (though they are held in June) are extravagant events that last all night long, with bands, dancing, different music areas, endless food and drink, fireworks, games, carnival acts, on and on. Apparently Trinity May Ball is one of the most exclusive parties in Britain. A very big deal. A few of our classmates even went to more than one May Ball, quite an accomplishment. I am happy with one, makes it more unique I think. So we decided as an MBA class to all try to go to the same one together, which is Queen's. And I hear they take a 'Survivors photo' at the end, around 6 or 7am. Will I make it for that? we will see...
Be careful what you wish for...
So, I've been raving about summer being the nicest month in Britain, and on and on to all who would listen, about sunshine and picnics and
Pimms (borrowed link, thanks Jason!) etc. BUT then the weather decided to be ironic lately and there have been nights I had the urge for a scarf, it was so cold. And grey. Everyone I know has been complaining about the lack of summer and the ridiculous low temperatures for June!
And yet here we go, this weekend everything spun around and I have sweated my way through jugs of Pimms and sunscreen, with temperatures around 30 celsius. (Well that was the quote, it felt much much hotter, especially in the sun.) So NOW I'm so HOT in my room-with-one-window-and-no-air-flow especially at night! Well I won't complain TOO much because I love the sunshine and my white skin needs some...and laying in Regent's Park today was great.... but I was also ROASTING. There seems no happy medium, I mean couldn't it have been 23-25 degrees with the same sunshine and less roasting?
Ok I am from Miami, and everyone always says 'Yes but you're USED to the heat!!' and my standard answer has become, 'no, we're used to air conditioning!!' In Miami, 8-9 months of the year are too hot to really spend time outside. (except maybe floating on a raft in the pool or ocean). And so we live in air conditioned houses, get into air conditioned cars, and drive to an air conditioned work. Possibly go to an air conditioned bar or other social venue afterwards.
So the SHOCK on the system is not really the heat, it gets much hotter at home, but it is the way the heat soaks into every inch of existence in a place like England that doesn't expect much heat and so is less prepared for it. How do you sleep with no air movement and no sheets? (ok well buy a cheap crappy fan from Argos or Dixons and enjoy the slow moving hot air..) What do you do when you put on makeup and 5 min later are greasy with sweat? How do people not get ill with the stifling sauna-like heat and smelly BO on the tube? How do you study in an unairconditioned environment? Drink at a dark stuffy pub without a/c? Not let all your food go bad after sitting out for 5 minutes, when your fridge is too small to put everything in? etc etc.
Ok enough drama, you get what you asked for, and we all asked for summer. I'm not really unhappy, we count our days of sunshine over here as very precious indeed and I'm mostly griping about my current warm temperature but its a love-hate relationship. I'll go rub aloe on my burnt skin now and lay out my bathing suit for more sun-soaking tomorrow, quite happily I'll add. Hey, I am from Miami you know.... ;)
Last week of lectures
I can't believe the MBA lectures are coming to a close!!! Amazing how much you can learn and develop in a one-year MBA, and also how fast it goes by. This is the last week of formal lectures. Many classmates are leaving Cambridge soon, invoking a sappy general feeling not dissimiliar from the end of senior year of high school... in fact i have a sudden craving to have a shiny new yearbook to pass around and get signatures next to everyone's pictures, with lots of 'have a nice summer' and smiley faces scribbled about!!! (actually we ARE creating a yearbook, not sure if that is a standard MBA practice or not but we initiated it among the class, thanks Hendrik and Viola et al; it just isn't available quite yet).
We do still have until 1 September before we turn in our final
individual project and are considered 'finished' with the MBA. But things will slow down (theoretically) with fewer people around and no formal lectures. Everyone keeps asking one another 'are you staying in Cambridge for the summer?' I am definitely not leaving Cambridge for potentially the best season of the year to be here! Summer in Cambridge that I've seen on brief trips here before can be magical with the green and sunlight and picnics and time on the River, so fingers crossed. Not that we've had much sun so far this year...
So what am i up to for summer? Going to do some marketing work for my previous employer,
Kaplan, in London part time, in addition to my
IP. The
Kaplan London office has a lot of GMAT and MBA prep offerings, as well as medical/nursing and other courses. Sounded like a great idea to work part-time at first, hey make some cash to travel with and good experience, and still should be, but the commuting between Cambridge and London is not sounding quite as fun now. On the plus side I will have no excuse but to read lots and lots of great books this summer on my train rides! Commuting in London, etc, is SO much nicer than in Miami...compare driving an hour in horrible traffic with people honking and cutting each other off, with sitting and reading a great book for an hour...even if the train/tube is crowded there is still no comparison!
It will be good to spend more time in London again though. I love the city, and was very well-adapted living there nearly 3 years. It's funny now living in a small town like Cambridge though, when I go into London I feel a bit more like the "Country Mouse" now, walking around overwhelmed and wide-eyed...so much shopping, so much going on, wow.... kind of fun.
Hats at Ascot
Hats off to crowds headed to Ascot today
I stumbled upon a small slice of British culture and 'pageantry' (in my opinion) yesterday, as I got off the train at London Kings Cross and started to see men in top hats and vests with canes all around... a certain alice-in-wonderland fairytale feeling floated through Kings Cross as people paraded down a long green and flowered walkway to get the train to the
Royal Ascot. The Ascot horse races are supposed to be the most popular in Europe, and tradition goes back to the first race in 1711. Some random details about the history can be found
here.I've always been fascinated with the idea of the
Hats tradition at Ascot, and I regretted not having my camera as I got to see many hats up close and personal. Women with their bright colors and hats that varied from small netting with frills to wide brimmed neon colors, flowers, trim and decor. The BBC website offers official
'tips for hats' in case you are ready to plan your own ensemble this week.
An archway was constructed over the platform heading to Ascot with a plaque and flowers, adding to the excitement of the event for those going, and completed with triumphant music playing in the background.
Final elective of the MBA
Two weeks from the end of our last term of lectures, I really was not looking forward to STARTING a new course, as many others were finishing. But Global Macroeconomics was scheduled as more of a 'block' course, over the final 2 weeks of term.
You might not expect a nurse/teacher/education manager to have much interest in Macro-Econ, but surprisingly it is one of my favorites. While at first thought the field of economics might seem somewhat remote to the average person on the street, when you really stop and think about the front section of any newspaper or the headline news, SO much of it is about economics. And so this course about differences in growth rates by country, different forms of capitalism, globalisation, currency exchange, etc feels really about a course in modern life, business and politics, and provides insight into the news articles I read each week. Especially given my lack of background in this area before. In 10 minutes with our professor I understood the fundamental idea of corporate governance, and I can now clearly describe the two ends of the spectrum on capitalism, liberal market economies and coordinated market economies, which underpin much about the two major American political parties for instance. It was also interesting to talk about growth rates being a function of available labor (i.e. working population), human capital (i.e. skilled and educated workforce), and capital investment (machinery etc), but overall growth rates being limited by technology. Interesting way to describe the differences that occur.
Ok so no I'm not going to go become an economist after a couple of courses, but so much of this was hazy and unclear before going on the MBA. Perhaps I'm playing a bit of catch up in comparison with classmates who work in finance and other areas, but better late than never I think. Between Global Macro and my Capital Markets course, whole areas of modern commerce are coming into focus for me which is fab. Highly recommend the courses for any future Cambridge MBAs by the way!
Women in action
Cambridge Women's Touch Rugby (MBAT 2005)
MBAT adventures
Recovering from shin splints and a mild sunburn after an adventurous weekend at the MBA Olympics,
'MBAT', which is hosted at HEC every year.
What was the MBAT all about then? My memories are swirls of school colors and chants, sunshine and sweat, hikes across (and up and down) HEC campus, good French cheese, different music at all hours, and views out the chateau over to the rugby fields. It was a chance for 14 MBA programs to both collaborate and compete, a mixture of bonding closer to your own school in showing of spirit, and curiosity and eagerness to talk to people of other programs and make new contacts and friends.
Cambridge was awarded the 'Fair Play' trophy overall, which suits our collaborative and highly-spirited class nature. I think over 70 out of 104 students came along to MBAT, most on a long crowded bus ride from Cambridge (ok yeah I opted for the slightly more expensive Eurostar transportation to avoid mixing feeling bus-sick with playing sports and drinking all in 3 days time!). We had a great time overall and were very excited to be participating in MBAT for the first time. We would gladly recommend that future classes participate and keep up the tradition! Hey maybe they can even invite alumni who are around...might need some extra voices for any attempt to out-chant LBS...
The majority of the class was assigned accomodation at a Chateau on campus, the CRC, which was difficult to get to but very nice. One classmate had the 'best' room according to reception, with fireplaces, a desk, and enough space for our whole class to fit if you ask me....not to mention massive ceilings. And huge windows looking out over the green campus. Overall I thought HEC's campus was quite nice to visit, but I must say a little isolated and probably too dull for me personally to live at. The food in the dining hall was remarkably good for dining hall though. Anyway food and drink was all included in the set fee for MBAT. Many of us are still getting over the fact that all you can drink was actually free....
And how did the rugby girls do in the end? We played hard, we hit hard (oops apparently you arent supposed to be so rough in touch rugby! ;) ), we managed to score one try. We lost one and tied one, respectable enough for our brand new team. Many of us really like the sport now though and want to play some more this summer!
Overall I highly recommend any European MBA-ers in future attend the MBAT, great fun...
.jpg)
.jpg)
