I will admit that I’ve been in a funk lately. Perhaps that’s attributed to the fact that I went home to California over the winter holiday, where my life feels vastly and dramatically different from how it is here at Oxford. In California, for example, there’s sunlight as well as a plethora of high-quality Asian food and milk tea. In California, I’m not mentally calculating exchange rates with every Apple Pay transaction I make. In California, there’s a certain degree of certainty and comfort in knowing how everything functions. In Oxford, it often feels like there’s coldness in all aspects. It’s not even so much about the stereotypical weather as it is about the behaviour of many of the people I’ve encountered throughout my time here, all contributing to the ever-stifling perception that my presence isn’t valued at this university.
Going back home seemed to rub salt on an already widening wound. As I reconnected with friends and family members over Christmas and they asked me about my Oxford experience so far, I didn’t quite know what to say. How could I tell them about the most salient aspect of my memories at Oxford so far: That my value here seems to be measured by the nature of my class participation?
It seemed silly to relay to others that whenever I participated in class and tied my personal experiences to the course material, I couldn’t help but feel like this sort of approach wasn’t respected. How do you relay to others outside of academia the implicit disregard you feel when you raise your hand, share your response, and are immediately dismissed to move on to another classmate? How do you articulate all the complicated emotions that arise when it seems like your classmates and professors don’t feel like you’re a strong student in the traditional sense, and that they’re therefore less likely to interact with you outside of class because of that? Moreover, what does it reflect about you when it seems like all your classmates are told that their insights are excellent, but not yours? Does it mean that you’re not a good fit for Oxford?
Maybe they would say I was overthinking. Yet, maybe they would understand. Maybe it’s common for newcomers to feel stupid and inadequate in an environment like Oxford where so many of your peers are geniuses. I wanted to remind myself that we were all accepted to the university because of our diverse perspectives and backgrounds, rather than in spite of them. And it’s not that I’m not grateful to be here. I constantly remind myself that it was my childhood dream to attend this university. I told myself that perhaps I just needed to adjust my framework for contributing in class. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, being able to tie course concepts to personal experiences elicited thoughtful, empathetic reactions from others. Here, it often seems like any mention of one’s identity is viewed as a distraction from relevant intellectual arguments.
My column’s title is “Risk Appetite” – meant to be a reference to my love of food, of course, which I’ll talk about in a second – but my entire Oxford experience has been a test of risk appetite thus far. The Institute for Risk Management defines the business term as “the amount and type of risk that an organisation is willing to take in order to meet their strategic objectives.” In this case, coming to Oxford was already a risk for me, as someone who has consistently struggled with insecurities about my intellect. Still, I’d wanted to learn. I’d wanted to achieve the childhood dream I had when I visited Oxford a decade ago in 2016 and envisioned myself here. I’d taken a risk to do so, but perhaps at the expense of my own confidence.
I thought my time away from Oxford would renew me and refresh my energy for the start of Hilary term. Yet the second I returned to Oxford after the holiday, I craved going to London; I needed to leave the insularity of the Oxford bubble and be away from the dark mentality that had accompanied it for most of Michaelmas term.
So, I found myself going to London and visiting the same spots I’d visited when I was a tourist all those years ago and dreamed of going to Oxford. I distracted myself from that impending sense of doom with good Asian eats, too: a Hong Kong cafe here and a viral hotspot for Thai drunken noodles there. Even as I was momentarily comforted by the act of consumption, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the past. First, it was missing all the restaurants I’d tried serving similar dishes while working in Los Angeles. Then it was thinking about the girl I’d been when I’d come to London all those times when I was younger and thought my life would be infinitely better if I could call myself an Oxford student. To see the world through rose-tinted glasses – I wanted to feel like that again.
Funnily enough, London’s Asian restaurant scene has become a sort of escape for me because of how much more closely it parallels Los Angeles’s, as is characteristic of these metropolitan cities. I look forward to the days I can go to London, if only to feel secure in the one thing I understand best: food. If my intellectual engagement in class isn’t comparable to others, at least I know how to wax poetic about the importance of a good wok hei. More and more, though, I find myself wishing I was back in LA, where I understand the frames of reference when it comes to topics of discussion more – talk to me about any movie or TV show, please. Whenever I eat in London now, it’s my way of feeling like I’m surrounded by the Asian food scene in LA and subsequently, the security I felt while in the environment I knew best.
At the same time, I wonder if it’s one of those cases where nostalgia for the past – in this case, my time in California – overwhelms the present: a romanticization of an illusory “Golden Age,” or “La Belle Époque,” if you will. Over the break, I finished the fifth season of “Emily in Paris,” and there was one particular moment that really resonated with me. After visiting the U.S. Embassy in France and connecting with fellow Americans over American culture, the titular expat Emily (Lily Collins) has had a taste of home. Later in the season, she has lunch with her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo). Emily confesses that she feels like her belle époque was when she first came to Paris.
“Everything was so new and exciting,” she tells him. “Like a fantasy. Now it all just feels so difficult. And real.”
Gabriel disagrees. “We tend to romanticize the past,” he says. “Things were pretty hard back then too.” When they part ways, he adds: “You know, they didn’t start calling it La Belle Époque until after it had passed. Nobody knows if they’re living their golden age. Maybe we’re living ours now.”
It’s a hard-hitting scene of clarity. In many ways, I feel the same as Emily. When I came to Oxford, I was just so grateful to be here. I wanted to take every opportunity I could get to engage in this university of my dreams. I can’t help but think about how, maybe in the future, I’ll look back on this experience and be wistful for the amount of times I was challenged intellectually by my peers. Maybe, paradoxically, I’ll return to Los Angeles and miss all the restaurants I tried in London. Maybe I’ll gloss over all the difficulties of my time here at Oxford and wish I was still in this environment again.
Still, I won’t know until the time’s gone. That’s the beauty of “La Belle Époque.”