I walk across campus to get to work, a ten minute walk. It’s about a quarter mile, but it seems longer. I find it strange that this short walk seems so tedious; I walked twice this distance in Oxford to get to class and aside from the occasional tour group road block, found the trek reasonable. Maybe it’s the stifling DC humidity that layers the body in sweat before you even register the heat. Maybe it’s the prospect of getting pseudo-drunk from the copious amounts of organic solvent fumes I have to work with in lab. Maybe it’s just the prospect that I’m not in England anymore. The grass is always greener.
There’s something idyllic about Oxford, though. You walk the High Street, lined with smooth stone weather-aged walls that are punctuated with great carved wooden doors to the entrance of each university. These doors are often open and beyond the dark arches of the entrance hall, you to glimpse the trimmed lawn of front quadrangle and the rose window of the college chapel.
Students flit in and out; you imagine in black robes and a scholar’s cap like Harry Potter, but really they wear corduroys and polos—not very magical, but very English. They are visibly distinguishable from the tourists, who wear sweatshirts emblazoned with ‘OXFORD UNIVERSITY’ in a variety of colors and amass in groups. Tourists always tilt their neck upward to see the large arched windows of the Bodleian Libraries; students look straight ahead—they’ve spent hours there already.
Across town the Thames River is known as the Isis; it is shallow and shaded by scrub bushes from the bordering meadows. Tourists and students use long poles to push off the bottom of the muddy river and propel the boat called punts forward—if they’re lucky (or practiced). The passengers push off the bank and the punters duck low-hanging branches and attempt to steer the narrow winding river. You, the experienced punter, remember to bring sandwiches and Pimms. Though the ducks circle your boat like vultures, the food, the sun, and the lazy pace of the punt allow you to forget the problem set due tomorrow and relax for a couple of hours.
You never do things half-heartedly in Oxford. You lock yourself in the library for the entire day to finish a problem set, books piled high around you and seven articles on your laptop saved on your computer. You break for lunch and if necessary a lecture, but your mind is always focused on the next problem and how to solve it. Half the week is hell as you flip continuously between several books to re-learn what they discussed in lecture. No matter how good the lecturer, it seems the only way to learn in Oxford is to teach yourself.
But after tutorial, you rejoice and relax in a manner akin to finishing a final. The copious amount of free time you used to collect and gut library books may now be used—if only for a short while—for your own devices. You go to a pub and have a pint. Although you know rowing practice means you will have to rise before the sun and there are lectures still to attend, these are few and far between. You have hours, perhaps days, to relax and explore the city—maybe even go to London or Paris—before the next problem set.
This is what I will miss about Oxford. It offers coffee shops, but they close before the caffeine can enable an all-nighter. It offers tea houses whose patrons never ask for a to-go cup and a bag for their scone. It houses one of the most prestigious student union that gathers some of the world’s greatest leaders and scholars to speak to its members. This same union also converted its wine cellar into a night club for the university to cheaply and sloppily continue their weekend revelry. It does not expect you to be both president of Mock Trial and captain of Ultimate Frisbee. It does not expect you to always attend lecture, but it expects that you will always learn the material.
I realize it’s not the walk across campus that is long, but the day. I have packed it with work in lab, GRE prep, and grad school research—and it’s only summer. Next year I will return to a year of waking early to squeeze in a run at Yates before lab, eating Grab-n-Go between lectures, and studying late into the night for my thesis. This is not to say I won’t enjoy my year; there’s something especially rewarding about looking back at the end of a long day and realizing just how much you’ve done. It’s nice to take a break from orgo lab by discussing the merits of Heart of Darkness as a modernist piece or riding in the GERMS ambulance to the next call. You feel accomplished, self-congratulatory, and deserving of that extra scoop of Moose Tracks ice cream in Leo’s.
Around finals season, though, I know will miss Oxford. Not necessarily because of the free time, but because it was during this free time that, without the bait of good grades as validation, wow I actually enjoy what I study (phew, three years of undergrad wasn’t for nothing!). Oxford may not be a good reflection of the real world and the workforce, but it is a curious place where you walk the cobblestones that Auden and Berkley walked and ponder—yes, ponder—about how you really want to spend your free time.
