Oxford, You Sure Are Lovely in the Summer

St. John's College, home for the next two years

What a whirlwind trip! I left for Oxford at the beginning of last week and just returned this past Tuesday -- quick enough of a turnaround, I think, that my body gave up trying to figure out what time it was and consented to sleep whenever I told it to. The days in the UK filled up with wandering the streets of Oxford once again, with some sightseeing in London and at Blenheim and Greenwich, but most importantly with meeting with some of the people and contacts who will help shape my life for the next two years. As I have mentioned, the purpose of my trip to Oxford was to complete a mandatory "needs assessment" with the university's Disability Advisory Service in order to get sign language interpreters and other disability accommodations in order before the fall. I was thankful for the opportunity to finish the assessment and meet with my disability office advisor before the whirlwind of Welcome Week in October, especially since it helped me wrap my mind around the strange and complex world of Oxford (or begin to, at least) and also allowed me to meet other Rhodes people along the way.

Detail of St. John's Canterbury Quad

ASL vs. BSL: this was one of the main issues at hand. I intend to learn some British Sign Language while in England, if only for fun and also since I've already gotten to meet or be in touch with a few deaf people who know BSL. But the fact is that ASL is the sign language that I understand, that I have used throughout my education and life, and that is by far the best option for my studies in the UK. After studying at Oxford through a Stanford overseas program three years ago, I know that it is possible to find and use ASL interpreters in the UK, and having that information was incredibly valuable in meetings during the last week. We also discussed other backup accommodation options such as captioning, and I was able to get in touch with the disability contact in both my department and my college. (Tricky Oxford fact: I will be shifting between and communicating with several different entities during my time abroad: the English department, St. John's College, the Rhodes Trust, and the DAS and any other overall university offices. Not at all like Stanford or other American universities, where various offices are much more unified and tightly knit!)

More John's under blue skies

We stayed at St. John's throughout the visit and I quickly got a feel for the college, thanks to a few administrators and current students/current Rhodes scholars who were kind enough to show me around and tell me all about the place and its culture. Meeting people was by far the best part of the trip: from the six or seven "Rhodies" who took the time to greet me and share their insights about Oxford and the Rhodes, to the wonderful administrators and porters and other staff at Rhodes House who sat down and chatted and answered my questions and fetched me from the airport, to the various other people across Oxford who were similarly friendly and generous, everyone I met made me incredibly excited for this fall. I accomplished everything I set out to do: got the ball rolling on disability support, learned a ton about the ins and outs of Oxford life, and made some new friends and connections I hope to get to know as the next few years unfold. Plus the weather was gorgeous to boot, and taking my mom around to some of my favorite sightseeing places from my last time abroad added another dose of fun. To be sure, I'll have my share of challenges ahead (as will everyone adjusting to life at Oxford), but lots of excitement awaits, too.

A typical Oxford view: the Radcliffe Camera brooding over Radcliffe Square

Now for those last two months basking in the sun in the American Southwest before I head off again in October!

In the beautiful gardens of Rhodes House!

The Journey Begins! (at least preliminarily)

I officially started my visa application today. I had been waiting until I got an academic enrollment confirmation from Oxford, which arrived a week or so into July, and then needed to do some further research about the UK visa process before filling out the first part of the application online. (As well as paying the steep application fee, which was almost $500. Major ouch.) Now I need to do a little more waiting until I send the entire thing in, because...

I'm going to Oxford this week! (And I need to send my passport in to the British consulate with the rest of my visa application materials, which can wait until after I return.) The Rhodes Trust is being kind enough to bring me out to undergo the Oxford Disability Advisory Service's needs assessment process - in other words, to start setting up sign language interpreters and other accommodations for this fall. Far better to get these accommodations details worked out in advance of my arrival with the other students in October, especially when the DAS has a mandatory in-person assessment that can't well wait until orientation and the start of term. I'll be sitting down for that meeting and a few others later this week, and will also be taking advantage of the opportunity to meet some other Rhodes scholars currently at Oxford, tour around Rhodes House (which I've only seen from the outside at this point), see St. John's and other future haunts around Oxford, and probably stop by Stanford House to boot. The last time I walked the streets of Oxford, in the chilly December of 2010, I remember having a feeling that I would be back to the City of Dreaming Spires. I just can't believe it's come already. I'm beyond eager to see some of the people and places that will compose the texture of my life over the next two years.

This week's travels will be a real whirlwind, and I'll be back in the U.S. by the beginning of August, but here we go! Determined to catch some British tea and Ben's cookies while I'm at it, too.

Endings and Beginnings

I graduated from Stanford earlier this month, and have now moved away from the Bay Area and started my summer routine, which means that the next step, in just a few months, is... Oxford.

Leaving Stanford was hard, especially since packing up my belongings and preparing to head out made me realize (as if I hadn't realized before) what a special place the Farm has been for me over the last five years. I've met terrific friends, learned from brilliant professors (and friends and dormmates and advisors and coaches and mentors and other people), and had many tremendous experiences. I won't try to put it all in words here, but suffice it to say I found myself getting very nostalgic during the past month. I'm glad the summer will give me time to process everything as I also shift my focus to the adventure ahead. As difficult as Stanford was to leave, over the past year I also itched to go new places and experience new things, even while I tried to take advantage of the present moment. Living deliberately with purpose, it seems, can be a balance between novelty and familiarity.

Oxford looms ahead, and thank goodness it possesses its own mix of the novel and the familiar. It's not as familiar as Stanford's sandstone arches, but I do smile whenever I think of returning to those "dreaming spires" once again. And its share of newness seems like that of sheer opportunity. I'm choosing to think of the people I've not yet met and the places I've not yet seen, and to embrace the thrill of those things. The next two years will push my limits in an entirely new way, and I know it. Right now I'm catching my breath, reading a couple of good books, reminding myself to enjoy the sun in the Southwest before it disappears into London fog, and preparing myself for the roads ahead.

Those roads will continue with my visa application, which I will prepare and submit once I receive some official paperwork from St. John's in the next few weeks. Here we go!

St. John's!

Finally, it's official. Or, at least, another thing is official among all the hurdles of getting into and attending Oxford. In the strung-out bureaucracy of Oxford admissions, I heard first that I had been accepted into my proposed M.St. program in English literature from 1900-present. Excellent. One step down. The next step: get accepted into one of Oxford's colleges or another. I'm still not entirely sure how the college admissions process works, and I'd been told I wouldn't receive this decision until late April or May, but it positively dragged on. First I heard informally, about two or three weeks ago through the Rhodes registrar, that I'd indeed been accepted into my first-choice college, St. John's, but I hesitated to tell many people beyond my immediate family and some friends. It wasn't official, it wasn't set until I got that email with a formal offer of admission, and I didn't want to jump the gun. Several other people I know who will be at Oxford next year had already heard back about college decisions, and so I sat and waited.

Yesterday I got the email. "[W]e are very pleased to offer you a place at St. John's College as a graduate student..." I breathed a sigh of relief. Then immediately, of course, I started looking up more information on St. John's than I ever had before. Time to get my heart set on it at long last, so why not? Here's a bare sketch of what I found (much of which reminds me that, indeed, I'm about to step into a different world at Oxford):

St. John's is one of Oxford's largest colleges, with around 390 undergraduates and 250 graduate students. (Still, that doesn't compare with even my Stanford Class of 2012, even though there will be other Oxford students from other colleges milling around.) It's one of Oxford's old, classic colleges, founded in 1555 during the counter-reformation. It currently has the largest endowment among all the Oxford colleges (and owns a lot of land in and around Oxford, including the pub across the street, which it also operates!). Notable alumni include Tony Blair and Phillip Larkin, as well as poet Robert Graves and apparently Jane Austen's uncle. It's in the center of Oxford, not too far from the English department building but also not in the heart of the busy city center with buses and tourists (I keep thinking I should be spelling this centre). The grounds are beautiful, though I suspect that, as at many Oxford colleges, one cannot walk on the grass...

In short, I'm thrilled. Two Rhodes scholars from my high school/New Mexico advocated St. John's to me when I first got the Rhodes, so I'll be continuing our mini-Southwest streak there. There are also a few other Rhodes scholars/Oxford students I've already made contact with who are in the college, so I'll be among good company. Let the adventure begin!

Another piece of news: recently found out that I'll be traveling to Oxford for a week over the summer to meet with their Disability Advisory Services office to get an accommodations/accessibility assessment before the academic year begins in the fall. Very excited about that, and my trip will involve staying at St. John's, meeting some Oxford and Rhodes people I might be getting to know next year, and generally getting the lay of the land before October! More on this later...

It's Official!

When I submitted my application to Oxford during the first week of January, I felt confident enough of my chances of getting into my program of choice: a MSt in English literature, focusing on the period from 1900 to the present. With my strong academic background at Stanford, and my abiding interest in literature, it seemed objectively likely that I would get in.

But of course the doubts crept in. In the past I hadn't focused on the twentieth century period. My honors thesis and much of my relevant coursework had been on the nineteenth century. (And, I admit, the nineteenth century novel is still one of my greatest literary loves. I had valid reasons for wanting to switch to the twentieth century instead, but was it really the best choice? Would the panel wonder why I wasn't applying for the 1830-1914 strand?) Even though I had put months of thought and preparation into my Rhodes application, I had written my actual Oxford personal statement very hastily, within the space of a few hours right after getting back from a three-week vacation overseas (during which I blithely and blatantly procrastinated the entire time). Plus, this was Oxford. Every year some Rhodes scholars do not get into their first-choice academic program. They figure it out eventually, but some graduate programs in Oxford are competitive with limited space, so no application is a sure thing.

I had been told that I wouldn't hear back on the department decision until at least mid-March, so I sat and waited. A second application round approached at the beginning of March, and all of the Rhodes scholars got an email from the Rhodes House warden informing us that we could put together an application to another program as a back-up if we wished. I hemmed and hawed for several days on this. Besides the fact that I was drowning in schoolwork at the end of February, I honestly did not have another program I wanted as much as a graduate program in English, or for which my application would be as strong. And my chances in English were good enough anyway, weren't they? So I sat and waited some more, feeling slightly panicky for not covering my bases.

And then, this past Friday, the email I'd been waiting for finally arrived.

Dear Ms. Kolb,

I am delighted to inform you that your application for admission to the University of Oxford as a graduate student has been successful. We would like to offer you a place for the Master of Studies in English (1900-present) beginning 14th October 2013...

Every time I clear another hurdle in this process, I feel stunned all over again. At one point in my life, when would I ever have thought I'd be going to the University of Oxford? As a graduate student? (A humorous aside: another friend of mine recently got her offer to Oxford in a different department, and the letter was much more - shall we say - dryly phrased than this one. The English faculty, for all their Britishness, actually expressed delight! I am going to need to get used to this British tenor, which seems to range from a bone-dry quality to words such as "delightful" and "splendid," which one doesn't see nearly as often in the U.S.)

I haven't heard yet which college I'll be in. That decision should arrive within a few weeks, further prolonging the strung-out process of preparing to become an enrolled student in the UK. And then I'll have the visa tangle to worry about. But, for now, I'm looking forward to celebrating with my family at home this week for spring break - it's official, I'm going to Oxford!! Twentieth century writers, here I come.

Oxford, Revisited

Sometime this last week I got an email from Stanford's Office of Accessible Education, with which I've worked for the entirety of my Stanford days for academic and extracurricular accommodations, mostly including sign language interpreters. My Oxford video was up! You can view it here:

http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae/study-abroad

After I studied abroad in Oxford two years ago, the OAE approached me about helping to make a video about my overseas experiences as a student with a disability. (It sounds like they've been going about revamping how Stanford thinks about its overseas studies programs for students with disabilities, which I will say - aided by my personal experience - is a very good thing.) I helped to film this video probably a year ago, or even a year and a half; I can't really remember. Long enough that I'd almost forgotten about it by the time I saw it this past week. All the photos are mine from my travels in the UK, and I must admit that recalling what I saw and what I had to say after I came back made me very, very excited to return, British accents or no! I will approach Oxford the second time around with a preexisting sense of the place, and also preexisting expectations of how I might fit into it, but I also look forward to many new experiences and (hopefully) a few surprises along the way. None of this is to understate how much of a challenge Oxford was the first time around; it wasn't just lovely frigid afternoons in London taking pictures of Buckingham Palace, and I very well remember that. Many more challenges await, but this video (and my own advice to other students, but also in a way to myself) reminds me to anticipate rather than shy away from them.

As I mull over the times ahead and my goals and expectations for Oxford in a number of months, I'll start a series of posts on that topic, but for now it's rather fun to look back on my twenty-year-old, junior-year self wandering through England for the first time...

Oxford Application: Submitted!

I'm one more step closer to studying at Oxford. After the post-Rhodes flurry, and final papers, and then traveling internationally for the entire winter break, I sat down this week to get serious about finishing my statement of purpose and other supplementary materials for my time at Oxford. In accordance with my original plans, I've decided to apply to a one-year M.St. program in English literature, focusing on the time period post-1900. Though my original plans also included a second one-year program focusing in comparative social policy, I've started to waver a bit on that program - but the good news is that I've got time to decide what to do after the first year in Oxford! I need only apply to my first academic program at this point, and future options could include pursuing my English studies to the D.Phil level or choosing another of Oxford's many one-year M.St. programs to give my education greater breadth. I'm a big advocate of well-roundedness both academically and personally, so it's comforting to know that I'll have great options whatever I do. Current possibilities include history and policy, so we'll see what happens...

In the end, perhaps the most tempting aspect of the application to fret over was my selection of an Oxford college. Opinions about this part of the process vary, from the nonchalant (all Oxford colleges are wonderful, and you'll be happy wherever you go; it has very little bearing on your Rhodes experience) to the more insistent (your choice of college is one of the most important aspects of studying in Oxford). Ultimately, I chose to go with a combination of the two elements, as I stopped overanalyzing all of Oxford's dozens of colleges for that perfect mix of location/academics/style/demographics (a daunting task especially for an American still unaccustomed to the British education system), but still considered some elements bound to influence my time in Oxford. Here are a couple:

I trust that I'll meet neat and intelligent people wherever I go, so I stopped myself from paralysis by overanalysis on that front. I avoided some of the more traditionally aristocratic or upper-class colleges, but didn't discriminate on demographics beyond that. I'd like to go to a more quintessentially "Oxford" college, with old architecture and a long history, so I crossed the newer ones off my list. (In many cases, "newer" included schools older than Stanford!) I ruled out the smaller colleges, simply to have a bigger range of people to meet in college - after going to a school the size of Stanford, even if not nearly as large as some of the public institutions in the U.S., I doubt that I'll find the size of any one Oxford college too overwhelming, and I also didn't want to feel closed-in with a small bunch of people. I knew I wanted to go to a college with both graduate and undergraduate students, so didn't consider the colleges with only grad students. Location mattered a little, too: I didn't want to be too far out of the heart of Oxford, but also didn't want to be boxed in near, say, the Bodelian library area and city center, especially since I remember how many tourists roam there! Finally, a confession: I do want to be comfortable, and do want to make my Rhodes stipend go as far as possible since I'd like to travel in Europe over academic breaks during my two years at Oxford, so having the support of a wealthier college (which can include additional stipends, funding for books and athletics, etc.) would be appreciated. Perhaps to no surprise to some Oxford-savvy people, I settled on St. John's College, especially after talking to a few other Rhodes scholars who have gone there. It's nice, large, wealthy, has a good academic reputation, is central to Oxford but not too central, has options in case I change my academic plans totally for a second M.St., and so forth. Plenty of other Oxford colleges could have been an equally good match, but as I said - I also didn't subscribe to the belief that my college would be one of the most important defining factors in my Oxford experience. I'll be fine wherever I go.

And, with that decision made and with new, more academically-focused personal statement written and Rhodes application materials recycled, I submitted my application this morning. I've been questioning myself about it for weeks, especially with one nagging doubt swimming in my mind (what if I got the Rhodes but can't even get into Oxford?), but still feel good to have it off my list. Plus, after months of introspection and analyzing my personal goals while preparing for the Rhodes, it wasn't nearly as difficult this time around to express my ambitions on the page. That's one benefit of this entire experience already, and as for the rest - we will see!