Ole’ Oxford

14 June 2013

I swear that everyday just gets better and better here at Oxford. We have been continuing to work on our group projects, the ones that we began yesterday and the ones I believe I have failed to blog about as of late. I presented my idea to the class as a potential project, and it ended up being one of the 9 chosen to develop a business model for. There are 4 of us in our group and it has been absolutely astounding how much progress we have made in a mere day. My idea on integrating employee fitness plans into corporation environments has developed and emerged as a shaped idea that I think we will really implement once we get home to Utah this fall. With the help of my fellow colleagues, we were able to shape our hypothesis and proposed problem into quantifiable means.

How can a group of consultants improve the physical, emotional, and social health of a corporation?

This is the question we nailed, and the one we hope to solve. Each of us in our group worked hard at molding our question into one that truly reflected what we hope to accomplish with out business model. As a knowledgeable group about physical, mental, and social health issues, we plan to go into corporations and consult their high performers. With these people educated in effective overall health, they will then be able to teach individuals within the corporation how to live a healthy and well-balanced life.

Our excursions today included a visit to the Boolean Library and the Sheldonian Theater.

The Boolean Library is one of the main libraries at Oxford and still holds some of the oldest books in the world for people to read. The upper level of the library is still preserved to look how it did hundreds of years ago, with the same traditions and rules as before. Although the books are no longer chained to the desks, they are not allowed to leave the library, and can only be studied with the exchange of your library card at the front desk for the book. Without your card you cannot leave the building which prevents books from being stolen. This library is the same place where Harry Potter visited the “restricted area” in the films. We could not take pictures in the Library…but I am curious to watch the films again and see if I can identity where parts were filmed in this library.

The Sheldonian Theater is the building that brings all the individual colleges together. Everything throughout at Oxford Student’s scholastic life is regulated by the college they attend with the exception of matriculation as an Oxford student upon arrival, final exams, and graduation. The exams take place in the exam hall (photo located in my earlier post), and matriculation and graduation take place at the Sheldonian Theater. For this reason, the theater is often used to identify the University of Oxford because it is one of the few places were the University takes charge of the student’s academia rather than their individual college. This may seem like a different system to students of American Universities, but it has worked incredibly well for Oxford as well as Cambridge (they use nearly the same system)…Maybe we should consider implementing this into our Universities in the US, as Oxford and Cambridge are of the highest caliber of University study in the world!

Another interesting little fact I learned is that you cannot apply to both Cambridge and Oxford when you are preparing for full time study. You must choose and apply to either one or the other, and when you do apply you apply to the individual colleges within the University that you want to attend (such as Christ Church, or Merton, or Queens, or one of the other 35 at Oxford). I was able to apply to both Universities this summer because my program at Oxford is not considered an extended length of full undergraduate study. I will not be undergoing the rigorous exams at Oxford, but will undergo the exams when at Cambridge. For this reason, technically speaking I am studying at Cambridge this summer with a two week seminar at Oxford.

On the way back to our lecture at the Said Business school, some of us stopped at the a hill to walk up at get a good view of the city from higher ground.

I want to apologize for my lack of “edited” pictures. For some reason Photoshop touch will not open on my tablet…and it is such a pain! Hopefully I can figure out why it is not working shortly… So forgive the tacky photos, hopefully it does not bug you as much as it does me.