The formal college dinner was at Worcester, my college.

Mid-January, and I’m back in the London office after module 9. With module 10 nearly three months away, it’s as good a time as any to set the pace for 2009.

For many of us, the Christmas break was about disengaging from work and studies (i.e. putting off writing the Global Strategy assignment until our arrival in Oxford), so it was a relief to have six hours of lecture each day as opposed to nine.

Thinking back to the summer modules, the temperatures in Oxford plummeted since September, right alongside the FTSE. In spite of the constant pursuit of warmth, the mood was decidedly more relaxed in January than it was during the December module when we had the Finance and Financial Reporting exams to prepare for.

Having started the core electives, module 9 had fewer lectures with the entire class. Indeed, it didn’t escape our attention that we will only meet as an entire class for three more lectures before splitting up for the summer electives.

Judging from the past year, the next nine months will pass quickly; only too soon it will be time for the EMBA V class to progress from our multi-faceted work/home/Oxford existence, and onto our next steps.

What awaits us at the other end of this journey?

Cliff in evening study sessions in SR10

This time last year, many of the EMBA IVs had started new jobs or formed new companies.

Not so for us. With a few exceptions, most of us in EMBA V remain in the same jobs – we may perhaps be even more unclear about what we’ll do in September 2009, than we were when we started just over a year ago.

Naturally I’m not thrilled about the financial crisis, but have arrived at the conclusion that studying Finance at Oxford in the midst of it is deepening my understanding of the central issues of corporate governance and industry regulation. And whilst we may not leave Oxford with a fistful of job offers that are multiples of our previous salaries, I maintain that the financial crisis is in fact maximising the value of our education.

Attention is heightened. Theories are questioned. Lecturers are challenged (in both the lecture theatre and in the pub!)… How the financial crisis will affect our plans is yet to be determined; that it will is assured.

Making big choices which span our personal and professional lives is difficult; tragically, few people have the courage to take the risk. If you’re contemplating starting the Oxford EMBA next year, consider this: September 2011 will arrive anyway, and while there’s no way of knowing whether or by how much the financial crisis may have eased by then, one thing will remain very, very binary.

Either you will have an Oxford MBA degree, or you won’t… And if you do, you will understand intuitively, amongst other things, just how appropriate the Black-Scholes model for option valuation can be in calculating what is effectively a binomial decision tree.

SBS cloisters on a cold Sunday evening in January