Monday was another empirically early start. As if we were beginning to get ready to go to school again, we woke up and had our showers and shuffled down to the hostel lobby where Mr. Schwimmer and Ms. Sawhney blearily handed out bananas as Mr. Kaser stood by the street, watching for the bus that would take us to the town Oxford, and the university that defined it. We piled onto the single sofa, coffee table, the staircase and floors, dozing while we waited. Mr. Kaser stepped back inside, looking grim, announcing some delays with the bus. We resettled quickly: the few morning people setting out for Starbucks and money exchange, the enterprisers returning to their rooms to pack, and the rest of us relegated to the breakfast nook in the basement to watch English music videos on the wall mounted flat screen. The bus came shortly thereafter and we were on our way. Three English and two International students, and an Admissions representative met us in a formal reception room at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University. We received a fascinating overview of the school, which is run, to an extent like LSE, but with a wider array of topics. Unlike the United States, in Britain, students are expected to know what they want to do with their lives. When they apply to university, they apply to a major, known there as a course. This application process is really, truly about academics. They want to know what you’re passionate about, what you’ve done to prove you want to pursue it, and then grant you every opportunity to run wholeheartedly after that thing. This is the mission of Oxford, supported by three years of intensive study, and tiny classes of one to one, or one to two conversations between students and leaders in their chosen fields. As we followed our student guides through St. Hilda’s we got to see some preconceptions in living color, while others were overturned completely. We walked past boys canoeing down one of the canals that cuts through campus, received stern glances from proctors giving music auditions and groups in the College’s private dark wood-and-sunlight library, laughed with our tour guide and wonderingly counted the mounted trophies in the Student Center.
Many of us didn’t think we would want to pursue a subject so doggedly for three years, with our American predispositions to explore—and yet, as our Canadian tour guide said, “What motivated me to come so far? It’s Oxford.” And so it was, the city and university flooded with the same spirit. As we departed our tours, we walked along High Street, past expensive pen sellers, cafes with warmly lit windows advertising cream teas, tiny cluttered shops for books and music, and expansive stores with stylish mannequins in the front windows. We stopped in a covered market in the center of town to search out pies and sandwiches, mugs of tea, and curious British sodas to celebrate our last lunch abroad.
After rushing to purchase our last souvenirs, we bundled into the bus back into the city, where we would make our first acquaintance with the students of Westminster Academy. It was the very end of their day, but three students agreed to give us a tour around the building. They led us past large windows overlooking the city and inspirational quotes painted on the walls, down mazes of staircases and through makeshift libraries, regaling us with tales of the curious differences between “us and them”. We couldn’t get much more than a glimpse into their lives, but what we saw makes us eager to pursue the relationship between our schools in the future. As it turns out, an ocean of distance does not change the truths about high school, its strains and its successes; and with some willingness to learn, there is a world of friends we have yet to make.
