When I first stepped into the porter’s lodge of St. Anne’s College, it had been nearly one year since I had learned of my acceptance. Waiting to be given the key to my room, I found myself looking around, thinking, “This is really it… I am actually at Oxford.”

But what did “Oxford” mean?

And though the answer in retrospect is different and more meaningful than I could have imagined on that first day, it was not initially easy for me to get acquainted with the University—a mere three days later, “Oxford” meant a week of bedridden confinement in Ruth Deech Building 4-G01 with a debilitating flu.

Still, this American Visiting Student from Northwestern University was exposed that week to some wonderful, albeit unexpected things: the concept of a college nurse, English alternatives to UberEats and Mucinex (Deliveroo and Guafinesin performed admirably), and the advantage of a tutorial system in granting a student the flexibility to effectively defer the beginning of term by a full week. The philosophy of economics and the theology of Aquinas could wait.

Thus it was (unsurprisingly) easy to say at first that each day at Oxford was “better than the last”. But as my condition improved – in equal measure with my awareness of what collections, scouts, and BOPs were – truly remarkable and utterly unanticipated was the way in which my experience at the university maintained, each and every day, that same upward trajectory until I boarded the plane home on July 28th.

I referred to Oxford as a ‘place’, but that word is not sufficient to explain why its impact is so positive and enduring. For what is Oxford really? It is not merely a place; it is a university, a people, an ideal, an inspiration; it does more to encourage intellectualism than anywhere else I have been, and—amazingly—it does the same with collegiality. The result is a stunning combination that can overwhelm a Visiting Student. To get the most out of Oxford required intentional effort, a strategy for seeing and doing all that one could.

And what a delight it was! I solicited advice from as many people as I could find: from full-time students to visiting students who had arrived before I had, and from tutors to townsfolk. My ultimate list of things to do and to try was excitingly ambitious and, of course, completely impractical.

I recall asking two students in the Philosophy Society how to prepare for a tutorial: the first (a fresher) suggested a 7-day plan with days for revision, essay planning, and writing. The second (a third-year) explained that it took him 3 hours to write a paper, so it was best simply to read until about 3 hours before the paper was due, and then write until it was finished…

It is worth touching on the degree to which the tutorial system of Oxford diverges from American university pedagogy. Tutorials are rare in the United States (most will not have heard of them), and even though the content is comparable, the intensity of the weekly tutorial routine is a considerable adjustment. I wrote approximately 30 tutorial essays in Hilary and Trinity terms; for context, the average American 4-year degree requires around the same number.

What is marvellous (and I do mean this, notwithstanding the too-many-times I wrote a paper first-thing after a night at the Lamb and Flag) about the persistent intensity of tutorials is how they spill over into interactions with friends. It is hard not to, given the occasion of a delicious St. Anne’s brunch, share the chief arguments against euthanasia, the non-identity problem, the problems with the Pareto Principle, or Aquinas’s account of the mind when one has spent a week immersed in the literature regarding a subject.

Speaking of “the pub” (which I only learned comes from ‘public house’ thanks to the West End’s Choir of Man), what a revelation! As a stubborn teetotaler, I was nevertheless always among the most fervent proponents of spending an evening at one of the many excellent pubs littered throughout Jericho, on Broad Street or elsewhere. For its flexibility, consistency, and the atmosphere it instils, it is the chief aspect of English culture (you can keep the beans on toast…) that I wish I could import to the United States.

What Oxford meant in the end was a reminder of what is likely true at any university: most of what matters is the ‘in-between time’. Indeed, I learned a great deal of philosophy at Oxford, but to say merely that is to garishly understate what I truly came away with. To do that might require a lifetime – or would at least be too much to ask of the reader – but it is something about friendship, from the St. Anne’s sports ground to the 12:33 train back from London. And what it means to make something of oneself in a world touched (to borrow from Aeschylus) by the awful grace of God.

When I consider Oxford today, and I think when others do too, I reach the conclusion that the meaning of life must be in there somewhere. I feel lucky to say that, in my brief foray, I found part of it. And as such, I shall spend the rest of my days wondering what I might have missed around the next bend of the River Cherwell; hidden in the bookshelves of the Bodleian Library; from the fourth-floor railing and roof of the Ruth Deech Building; or while admiring Oxford’s great spires at dusk from that breathtaking bench found over Magdalen Bridge and up South Parks’ Hill.