!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe it’s telling that my first impulse is to write. After a final round district interview this past weekend, which itself followed a summer and fall (and, actually, a much longer time than that) of contemplating and planning, the District 13 committee of the American Rhodes Trust has elected to award me one of its Rhodes Scholarships for 2013. Along with 32 other Americans and up to 80 young scholars from around the world, I’ll be heading to Oxford next October to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, public intellectual and disability advocate, and (perhaps) academic.

Fresh off this news, I still have no words to describe this opportunity and what it will mean for me, much less what an enormous honor it is. Maybe my best attempt is this:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which was, in fact, the initial response of many of my friends upon receiving the news on Saturday night! (As an English major and someone who will study English literature at Oxford, it astounds me how our language stumbles over expressing the deepest sentiments of joy, incomprehension, and excitement. I won’t attempt to use any clichés to flesh out the !!!!! above. Suffice it to say, I’m reaching for sentiments like disbelief, gratitude, relief, anticipation, elation, and absurd hilarity.)

Up until I got the final interview, I had told very few people – outside of close friends, professors and other mentors, and family members – that I was applying for the Rhodes and the Marshall. Simply put, it seemed too pretentious to say so. Should I make it to the end of the process, which I knew was statistically unlikely, I would leave it up to the district panel to decide. No sense for me to derive talking points from the fact that I was daring to apply for the scholarship; it would work out in its own way. Now, though, I’m confronting the strange fact that, overnight, the whole world seems to know. And, besides that, the potential conceit of writing, of autobiography and disclosure, strikes me.

I first thought about applying for the Rhodes after studying abroad at Oxford two years ago, during my junior year at Stanford. I’ve always been drawn toward literature and the UK, and my library-stuffed, paper-writing, tutorial-taking experience at Oxford left me wondering what it would be like to return, for a solid chunk of time instead of an unbelievably short eight-week term. What I loved most about my time at Oxford, despite all the time spent alone in libraries, was my tutorial, a weekly session in which I would sit down with a professor to discuss a ten-page paper I’d just written on some nineteenth-century novel or another. I’d had independent study experiences before in high school (taking AP Latin and working on a creative writing/novel project for credit), and looking back on those – just as I now look back on my Oxford tutorial – it’s clear to me that I am never happier in the classroom than when I am sitting down with a knowledgeable, demanding, yet sympathetic teacher who demands that I give my utmost, right there in our conversation as much as elsewhere. I anticipate I’ll write about this more down the road – I see it as no coincidence that, since I was born with a profound hearing loss and always feel inherently uncomfortable in groups, the joy of such an individually rigorous, self-driven education system appeals to me. After encountering a similar setup while writing a honors thesis at Stanford during my senior year, and after coming to terms with the fact that I LOVE school and cannot see myself as anything besides a student for the next few years, I decided to give the Rhodes a shot.

It did seem a bit improbable that I could make it – as a bookish kid from New Mexico who grew up riding horses and mucking stalls when not writing stories or pursuing her perpetual goal of being “well read” (whatever THAT actually means). Despite the fact that I’d gotten into Stanford, and been to Oxford once before, I hadn’t grown up visualizing anything like this. I hadn’t started my own company or spent three summers in Africa or visited 50 countries, or any of the fairy tales of personal achievement that seem to accompany the bios of some Rhodes scholars. As a friend told me while considering the Rhodes herself, the act of applying seemed like contriving a star-kissed tale of destiny. All roads lead to Oxford, so to speak, and pun almost not intended. (Yet, more encouraging were my words of advice from the Stanford Overseas Resource Center: there is no such thing as a perfect application or a perfect applicant. Be yourself. Why not try.) The application process, which I’ve found to be much storied and even much mystifying since starting it in June, requires a conglomeration of recommendation letters, a personal statement in which one tries to express one’s history/passions/background/aspirations/fit at Oxford in an impossible 1000 words, an activities list, and a transcript. That’s it. Getting over the initial trepidation was the first step before obsessing over this my entire summer. Shout-out to my family for putting up with me. And then, of course, there are the interviews.

More on those later. For now, once again, I turn to writing in an attempt to understand and record the ways in which my life is about to change. I kept a blog during my first stint in Oxford (http://anglobibliophile.blogspot.com - strange that it still exists), and I intend this one to serve a similar function. I won’t be going abroad until next October, but there are several hurdles to clear before then. Not least, actually applying to a college and committing to a set program of study, and wrapping up my last few months in sunny California before heading to the cold and rainy UK for two years. That is, after I make it through this Thanksgiving week of disbelief, celebration, and the shock of seeing my face in print in all these Rhodes press releases around the country. (Again: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And, what am I doing here?) Many thanks to all my friends, family, professors, dormmates, teammates, interpreters, advisors, etc. for being wonderful. And for almost blowing up my phone and email and Facebook feeds. Until later, and on to this grand adventure!

Oh, and the blog title? It’s a Middlemarch reference. As it turns out, this novel figures into my interest in 19^th and 20^th century literature, and also took center stage in my final Rhodes interview for a good several minutes’ conversation on George Eliot. Again, more later…