May has been really busy so far. It started on May 1st with the traditional May Morning, i.e. the Magdalen College Choir singing from atop the Magdalen Tower at 6am in the morning. I don’t know how many thousands of people assembled in front of Magdalen College at that early hour but it definitely is another one of these weird Oxford traditions which no one really understands but which are a lot of fun, especially since they served free shots of Bloody Mary with the breakfast at the Big Bang afterwards. That’s probably the first time I had a Bloody Mary for breakfast but it was a good way to start the day and get ready for the lectures. On that day, I had Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation from 8:45am to 12:15pm; then, I attended a seminar on Fair Trade from 12:30 to 1:30pm before I had the Business in China lecture from 1:30 to 4:45pm.

Some more lectures on Friday before the weekend started with our Elvis Happy Hour at the Business School. Every Friday during term, our catering service organises a Happy Hour. In that week, they came up with something special and organised an Elvis Tribute Band. Really great fun!

Later on, the party continued at some friends’ place. Looking at my calendar, I see that I had meetings with two different study groups the following day. I wonder how I managed to attend and be productive. Anyways, on Saturday, Keble College  had its ball – themed For bidden City. That was the first proper College Ball I went to here in Oxford and absolutely worth going.

But doing the MBA is not all about partying. Lots of work the following week, especially since we went to the MBAT from 8th to 11th May and thus had to work on all the assignments due immediately after this great event before we could leave for Paris. Additionally, there were two more highlights before the MBAT: a talk by Lloyd Dorfman, the founder and chairman of Travelex, and a black tie dinner at my college. The talk by Lloyd Dorfman – he presented some anecdotes from his life as an entrepreneur – was interesting, especially since I got the chance to attend the dinner afterwards; and black tie dinners at my college really are always fantastic!

The MBAT in Paris is organised by the HEC business school. Many of the leading business schools gather there and compete in different disciplines – from salsa dancing, tug-of-war, rugby and all the more traditional sports to pétanque. As a member of our sailing team, I’m very proud that we won gold in that discipline and finished first ahead of Cambridge and the London Business School. Needless to say, that it was not only about the sports but mainly about just having fun, partying and meeting students from other business schools. The MBAT is a truly unique and amazing event!

We came back to Oxford on Monday morning. The big thing of the week was SCP interviews. The SCP is our Strategic Consulting Project which for us is one of the options for July and August. In teams of four, we could apply for several different projects. All the organisations did their interviews last week. We went to London for a project based in Canary Wharf and did some phone interviews for projects based overseas. I’m really curious which project we will get. But no matter where we will end up, I’m sure it will be a great experience! I’m really looking forward to working together with my team; they are all great guys.

On the party side, I went to an exchange dinner at Trinity on Wednesday and to another one at Brasenose on Friday before we all went to the Cuban Bop at St Antony’s. Besides all that, there were some more assignments to be handed in, e.g. a two-page individual piece of work for Social Finance which I just managed to upload before the Brasenose exchange dinner on Friday.