how was Oxford?

Oh goodness, how this question haunts me. I don't talk about Oxford much, at least not near as much as I think about it. I feel like the the short, canned answer I have come up with to answer this question is an insult to the experience, but there is no way to express the importance in a way that honors the questioners who will not understand, and many of which don't care to hear the real answer. I will write it here for those of you who care to know. Know that, thought there is a mild frustration that accompanies the fact that no one in my pre-Oxford life will understand, it is also something I expected and I know to be typical of any such experience that many of us have enjoyed. No one understands, but that doesn't detract from what we have.

In any case, I have learned a lot about myself as well as about Victorian literature and early church doctrine. Through the initial isolation of moving overseas, and also through countless conversations with good people, God revealed things to me I never knew. I see now the depth of my own pride. I see how I motivate myself through feelings of guilt and failure so that I never really accept the grace of God. I try to better myself alone, finding my validation in my success, but never really letting myself enjoy it, believing the lie that none of it is never enough. This way, I am motivated to continue without ever having to ask for help. I am an island, a lonely, terribly unsuccessful island. If I never stop and realize that my failure is something to be celebrated, rather than an ever-crippling weight, because it allows me to be embraced by the grace of God, then I will never find lasting joy. Oh how this has haunted me, though I never knew exactly where I was going wrong.

In discovering this, other successes followed. I realized my own self-sufficiency was a hindrance in my own ability to build real relationships with people. I began to let go of my boundaries, to let people in, to let them know that I love them, rather than assuming they know. This too, I'm sure, contributed to the depth to which I felt love for these people. It is hard work moving an island to the mainland, but I'm now working on it.

I'm trying to love myself more, to cut myself more slack and to recognize those things I have accomplished, rather than hiding every good thing I have done behind the heaps of things I think I should have done. Trying to change my mentality from 'I have done nothing great on my own' to 'I have done much by the grace of God' is a hard transition to make, but I'm working on that too.

Now, I'm sure that at this point you're wondering about the academic side of things. I complained and complained about the work that I did, but now all I can talk about is self-evaluation. Well, let me tell you, there was plenty of academic learning happening. In my Victorian literature tutorial I read a lot of Victorian literature. Go figure, right? I studied Jane Eyre, Aurora Leigh, R. Browning poetry, Tennyson poetry, Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, Esther Waters, Sherlock Holmes, Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights and Mary Barton. It was cuhrazy but actually not particularly difficult - just time consuming.

My church doctrine tutorial, however, was much more challenging. I studied Justin Martyr, Origen, the Gnostics, the theological anthropology of the Nicaean Debate, and Augustine and Eusebius' views on church/state relations. If you don't know what any of that means, then you can imagine my own feelings when I was given the sort of syllabus. Eek. I didn't think I would survive, I was convinced that they would discover that I wasn't really supposed to be there, but every two weeks, I immersed myself the the subject and the question and every time I came up with a respectable paper. Imagine that, hard work paying off. It was a much different feeling than a cram session the night before an exam and still getting an A. I worked for the accolades I received and slowly began to believe that I wasn't a fraud.

There are some ways in which Oxford changed me that I think may manifest in negative ways. I am more skeptical now. Now that I know how much information is out there, a pessimistic light is cast over any statement made by someone who seems to think they have it figured out. I don't like doubting everything I hear, or assuming that other people just don't get it, but it's a real battle I have to face in the wake of studying with and reading some of the most brilliant minds in those particular fields.

Well, like I said, I can't really being to see all the ways in which I've changed, but I can say that there is a hole in my heart, and it's shaped like the spires of Oxford. When I see anything on TV that reminds me of England, my heart jumps as it remembers the warmth it felt, even on those chilly, rainy days I refused to bike to lecture.