Life After DPIR - Mr Matthew Powell
Alumni 2010,
Summary
I started my PPE degree in 2007 at St Anne’s College, having taken a year out to work (as quite possibly the youngest member of Deloitte’s staff at the time) and travel. I will never forget our cohort’s first meeting with our tutors, where Nigel Bowles told us that St Anne’s was a place where it was “ok to read The Economist in the bath on a Saturday morning.” Lovely a sentiment though it was, Dr Bowles had clearly failed to realise that St Anne’s does not provide baths in college accommodation. We all succeeded however in finding alternative locations to read The Economist, in privacy.
After an extremely brief period during which I almost decided to continue with logic beyond prelims, I took politics and economics papers for finals, with a focus on comparative government and country papers in politics, and quantitative papers in economics, such as econometrics and game theory. My one aberration was the choice to take the British Politics and Government since 1900 paper, which is one of the most historically-oriented papers that can be taken in PPE, and which did not suit my more scientific-minded approach. This choice is the only thing I regret about my time doing PPE, which says a lot about how fulfilling and rewarding the experience was. However, there was certainly a silver lining to the decision to take BPG: my knowledge of twentieth century British political history is now vastly better than it was when I began my degree, at which time I knew unusually little for a PPE student about my own countrys politics.
PPE at St Annes was not the usual PPE experience. Bereft of the traditions typical of older Oxford colleges, and with tutors who are (justifiably) proud of the colleges modern yet academically rigorous approach, studying at St Annes was more akin to being at the countrys top-performing comprehensive school than at Eton. An impeccably-stocked library meant it was rarely necessary to venture through the University Parks to the Social Sciences Library. Tutors such as Nigel Bowles, Terry OShaughnessy and Roger Crisp, who are utterly committed to both their research and teaching, meant that undergraduates were never after-thoughts in a world of research.
I never intended to continue to further study after finishing PPE, but began to feel in my final year that I wanted to go that step further and contribute to academia, rather than being primarily a consumer of it. To that end, I am currently studying for the MPhil in Comparative Government, one of Oxfords two-year masters degrees. Im not entirely sure of where Ill go from here - possibly the DPhil, possibly politics, possibly something else entirely. The range of options still open to me is testament to the main strength of PPE: the degree provides an excellent grounding for a huge range of career paths. Would I do it all again? Of course. In fact, if they let me take a second PPE degree, I probably would - and I might give logic a go next time.
