Oxonian Anecdotes: Forward

I spent the fall of my senior year of college as a visiting student at Oxford University. The experience allowed me to grow me in ways I never expected. I have no doubt that one catalyst for my transformation was the number of precious, kindred souls with whom I was blessed enough to live while there. When planning this project, this ode to my formative months in Oxford, I could not imagine it complete without adequate representation of those brilliant people who became so dear to me. I have illustrated the following pages with photography, poetry, prose, and song lyrics - art created by some of those fellow scholars closest to me, in an effort to infuse this collection with their stories as well as mine.

As one might imagine, my academic life in Oxford also played a large role in the positive personal development I experienced. One of the most helpful things I learned through the challenging tutorial system of Oxford University was the value of footnotes – most of the essays I wrote became saturated with them. I have, therefore, decided to employ these useful little devices in the unlikely venue of creative nonfiction. They will not, as they most often did in those complex academic dissertations, be used to cite original sources, but rather to provide small bits of information not essential to the stories, but helpful in providing some perspective. I hope you enjoy reading the following stories as much as I enjoyed living and writing them. I also hope that you have been, or at least will someday be changed as I was changed under the spires of Oxford.