Oh, That Beautiful Hilltop

Wow, I miss Georgetown. I knew it would happen now, a few days before school starts. The facebook statuses have been updated for hundreds of friends, saying "Back to the Hilltop!!!!". I would have been moved in by now. I would have experienced that weird solo flight to DC that makes me question if I am leaving home or going home or both. After arriving at the airport, that beautiful drive across Key Bridge would offer me a view of my beloved Potomac. I would have arrived and had that first glimpse of Healy that makes me know without a doubt that I am a Hoya.

With class in a few days, I would have made that stupid climb uphill to the bookstore by now and made painfully expensive purchases there and on Amazon. I would have had a series of beautiful, joyful reunions with friends, getting nervous, checking the clock, looking at my phone, craning my neck around the corner, questioning “Is she here YET????”.

As stingy as I am, I still would have used the handy excuse that I had just arrived in DC and therefore absolutely needed to pick up a Georgetown Cupcake, a salad at SweetGreen, froyo at Saxby’s, a quesadilla at the Epicurean. Then I would have finally given in and have gingerly made that first trip to Leo’s, immediately recalling the hundreds of meals I had already eaten there with distaste. After resisting for 24 hours or so, I would have made the trek to CVS for Diet Dr. Pepper.

I would have decorated my room with pleasure, creating that little place that is all my own on campus. Lists of all the sight-seeing I still, after two years, have yet to do would be on my desk. Books I had to sneak into my suitcase would be around my room, pictures of home everywhere to make me miss it less.

How can I forget Dahlgren? I would have run my fingers through the fountain as I passed, sensing the thousands of Hoyas from years past in the atmosphere of Dahlgren Square, and slipped into mass feeling completely at peace. The Village A and LXR rooftops would have beckoned me up to confront me with how blessed I am with the beauty of my surroundings.

I’d be wishing school and work didn’t start so soon and thinking about how wonderful life would be if I could live the college life without grades or finals. I would be avoiding Lau like the plague. I’d be contemplating the semester ahead. I’d feel like my life was surreal and wonder where my summer had gone.

Instead, I’m here at home. I feel like a compulsive liar when I tell people I’m studying abroad and say school doesn’t start for me for another month. Really, I feel like a college drop-out and also like Georgetown kicked me out and said, “Don’t come back.” I’m excited for this year, of course, but that doesn’t matter right now. I have to mourn what I’m losing before I can enjoy what I'm gaining.

Perhaps I Am Ready After All....

Self-confidence is an interesting concept to me. It never seems to be based on strictly the singular self, but rather is determined as a self in relation to other selves: am I as good as he/she is? Am I as attractive as they are? As smart, witty, charismatic, entertaining, interesting….. Okay, I am, so I deserve to have some self-confidence. I don’t think that is how self-confidence should be, obviously. I just feel like self-confidence has commonly become competitive in that manner and lost much of its worth in the process. I think, however, that I am finally beginning to understand and feel self-confidence as it is meant to be—independent, untouchable, valuable.

I was contemplating self-confidence today while I was thinking about going to Oxford. If I had asked myself four years ago, even one year ago, if I thought I would ever study at Oxford, I would have definitively said no. Now it makes me think of an adrenaline rush, performing at your peak capacity as the occasion demands it—perhaps I stepped up my game in order to get into Oxford but once I arrive, I will flounder. Sink. Disappoint myself.

Once I would have thought that. Still I sometimes am plagued by those sorts of thoughts. But since going to college, I feel like some cliché flower that has suddenly bloomed into self-confidence. Or rather, a flower that realized I had already bloomed and merely needed to appreciate myself for who I am.

I’m still intimidated, yes. I also, however, feel at peace. I am scared to make new friends, to be a lone American girl in Europe, to meet my own expectations academically, to have the courage to actually live the adventure that is waiting for me, if I grasp it and own it. Simultaneously, if I were to be honest, I can say that I have no doubt that I will return to the States happy with the way I lived my study abroad experience. I don’t question that I could possibly look back and think, “Wow. That was boring. Totally not worth it.”

I anticipate thousands of beautiful moments that await me. It’s almost as though I’m at the end of my life, in the last few moments before death, playing that momentous slideshow in my mind of every significant, beautiful experience in my life. But instead of looking back, right now I’m looking forward. How splendid (yes, splendid) is that? I am so blessed. Right now, in this moment, I feel overwhelmingly excited, thrilled, thankful for what awaits me. In the next three weeks (that’s ALL that stands between me and Europe), I know I will panic. I know I will feel like I’m stepping off a lovely precipice—home—to fall into some mysterious abyss—Europe. I realize that I will never feel ready.

Still I await my Visa. I haven’t truly embarked on that painful journey through my wardrobe that concludes with two tiny suitcases. I do not know a single person at Mansfield College, Oxford. I haven’t faced my first tutorial. I haven’t made that first bitter withdrawal from a European ATM where my dollar loses its value to become a pound or a Euro.

But the excellent thing is that I have travelled. I’ve packed up my little life to fly off to DC; I can do the same for England. I know I’ll do fine in my tutorials; I have taken difficult classes before. I'll face some challenges, some hard times. But I will weather them and learn from my trials. How many people possess the opportunities I now have? I get to study British history and read British literature in England. I will travel to places I have read about and dreamt of.

And…I feel like I deserve to go. Perhaps that’s not what I mean to say….I feel like I have worked hard to get to this point and possess the skills, maturity, and attitude to enjoy this experience to the fullest. Even a year or two ago, I'm not sure I would have been ready to go, to do this. But now I am. So the question becomes not am I ready to go to Europe but rather is Europe ready for me?

An English Major's Research: Books About Oxford

Why do I love books so? There are those cheesey, well-known, oft-expressed explanations that hold some truth: with a book one can adventure around the world without leaving one’s home; with a book one can better oneself infinitely, stretching both the mind and the imagination; and with a book one can learn what it means to live fully, love truly, give freely.

I’ve always loved the deserted areas in used bookstores and dusty libraries that seem neglected and therefore ready for an adventure. The bindings of books have captivated me many a time, as though merely through reading the titles of books I am soaking up a fraction of their information. I associate books with people who are ambitious, not only in wanting to look beyond themselves, but also in taking initiative in self-education. Additionally, I enjoy people who are bored and watch a great deal of TV; alternatively, I feel like I live in a box, as one of teachers once told me—most of my free time is spent exploring fiction rather than learning of pop culture.

While I may be out of the loop on the latest music and reality TV shows, my addiction to reading has undoubtedly helped me to further my understanding of humanity, diversity, tragedy, great joy, love that isn’t broken in its reality. This summer in particular I have dedicated in part to learning of a foreign place I was almost entirely ignorant of. Truthfully, I remain unsure of what to expect when I arrive at Oxford, but through reading a bit of literature written by authors from Oxford and fiction set in Oxford, I have pieced a preliminary understanding of Oxford together.

This past year I read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and was blown away. I’ll always associate him with Oxford after watching a video in high school youth group that was about C.S. Lewis and showed me my first clips of the stunning Oxford, where Lewis both studied and taught. For the past few years, I have vaguely dreamt of that far-off place that seems so….allusive, mysterious, grand. The long, trying application process brought a little more reality to that dream.

But back to Lewis. If someone had told me that an author would create a lion who I could envision as Christ, I would have laughed at him. If someone had told me that a fantasy world could be created by another, earlier British author that I would love equally (though in a very different way) as much as Harry Potter, I would have scoffed at the very idea. C.S. Lewis defied my expectations and captivated me in his first pages. I loved his characters for their humanness, their imperfections that made them feel like true heroes/heroines, with depth and weaknesses I could relate to. He painted such rich, breathtaking portrayals of another world and of the beginning of heaven that I now imagine them in my vision of the afterlife.

After watching that video years ago, I have also dreamt of visiting the pub which Lewis and Tolkien held meetings for their literary club, “The Inklings.” I had greater reserve in reading Tolkien’s works than Lewis’, for who could resist The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are intimidating in their lack of brevity; the length of the movies alone made me hesitate to begin his books. Nonetheless, I am proud to say I persevered and discovered some remarkable similarities between Lewis and Tolkien’s fantastical creations.

I have long felt that a good deal of British literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has a captivating quality of creating a little magnetic familial sphere of rich gossip, drama, and intrigues that one can barely pry oneself away from. Lewis and Tolkien’s works are a bit different; they create enchanting and addictive characters, missions, and settings that ask the reader to venture to entirely new worlds. Both describe food in a way that makes me hungry for a merry feast that could even begin to compare to the repasts of elves or fauns. Their merrymaking seems warm, inviting, innocently joyful, and inherently friendly (particularly as contrasted with the scanty food during harrowing missions, where the characters long for those lovely feasts). Do not fear, however: I remain ever wary of the food in England.

Lewis and Tolkien both molded characters who seem reserved, mostly content, and yet hungering for something indefinable—they do not pretend to be brave or lovable, and then the characters and the reader alike are surprised at the courage the characters dig up from within and the love the reader finds has been inspired for them. Lewis and Tolkien allowed me to form a simple, important theory about Oxford: while the fiction I read that takes place in Oxford ridicules Oxford’s snobbery and lack of true worth, these men prove that Oxford can be credited with being a part of both these noble books of profound imagination, kindness, courage, and meaning, as well as their authors. After all, Lewis became a Christian at Oxford:

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England" (Surprised by Joy).

And where would we be if C.S. Lewis had never become a Christian? Additionally, both Lewis and Tolkien wrote their stories while teaching at Oxford. If I could happen to become friends with a literary genius like either Lewis or Tolkien while studying abroad at Oxford, I would be quite content.

In terms of fiction set in Oxford, I first read Brideshead Revisited, followed by Zuleika Dobson and Jude the Obscure. Brideshead doubled as being written from a man who studied at Oxford and a piece of fiction that partially takes place in Oxford (as does Zuleika Dobson). I must admit that I have rarely, if ever, read a work of fiction that made me feel as alone as when I read Brideshead. It’s difficult to describe, but I suppose it was due to both being completely incapable of relating to really any of the characters and the dialogue; everything that was said was said beautifully but it didn’t seem to reach the person being spoken to (and it didn’t matter: no one seemed to notice or care about the disconnect in the book itself). In a sense, I felt like the beautifully written dialogue was a series of self-involved monologues.

All mentions of Oxford seemed superficial, not flattering, perhaps because the main purpose of Oxford was partying, making social connections, and impressing one another with one’s troubled soul and originality as expressed through biting comments. To me, it seemed like I knew Charles Ryder little more at the conclusion of the book as I had prior to opening it; likewise, Oxford itself seemed a mere jumping spot to other happenings, a mere in-between place vaguely mentioned. Nonetheless, I am glad to have read a book so beautifully written and unique from anything else I have read. I picked up on qualities of snobbery, pretension, discontent, insecurity, frivolity, and romance in Waugh’s depiction of Oxford.

Zuleika Dobson portrayed a beautiful, surreal Oxford. The characters were ludicrous and extraordinary and utterly absurd. Oxford had a quality of being a place that was worth noting and had the potential for anything to happen. When every single male student committed suicide for love of the (quite literally) femme fatale Zuleika Dobson, the students of Oxford obviously looked to be a bit pompous, recklessly daring, and to crave recognition, fame, and nobility. Overall, Zuleika left me craving to see the boat races that make suicide worth postponing: “It [the Duke's suicide] shall be just after the Eights have been rowed. An earlier death would mark in me a lack of courtesy to that contest." And I simply must include this rather lengthy description of Oxford that I adore:

Oxford, that lotus-land, saps the will-power, the power of action. But, in doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger the vision, gives, above all, that playful and caressing suavity of manner which comes of a conviction that nothing matters, except ideas, and that not even ideas are worth dying for, inasmuch as the ghosts of them slain seem worthy of yet more piously elaborate homage than can be given to them in their hey-day…For there is nothing in England to be matched with what lurks in the vapours of these meadows, and in the shadows of these spires—that mysterious, inenubilable spirit, spirit of Oxford. Oxford! The very sight of the word printed, or sound of it spoken, is fraught for me with most actual magic. (Zuleika Dobson)

Finally, I have just finished reading Jude the Obscure this very day. I can honestly say I have never read a more depressing book. What can it be like to lose one’s dreams, children, wife, social respectability, and religious conviction? That sounds trite (how many other books include those occurrences?), but truly, Hardy succeeds in creating an oppressive, hopeless, heartbreaking tragedy. Jude’s Oxford is one which rejects the poor who crave scholarship, creating a crumbling series of buildings which merely signify a snobby community out of touch with humanity. Jude’s beloved, Sue, says that he is “one of the very men Christminster [fictional equivalent of Oxford] was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends…You were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires’ sons.” Hardy frequented Oxford’s Lamb and Flag, a pub where he supposedly thought up his tragic story Jude the Obscure. Luckily, the Oxford which denied entrance to those of low social status does not exist today. People who crave knowledge and learning like Jude definitely study at Oxford—like I shall. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to visit Hardy’s old haunt.

At the end of this rather long reflection on what I have pieced together about Oxford, I find myself having produced little in the way of an antidote to my ignorance of the place. I simply know that some absolutely BRILLIANT men and women have studied at Oxford. I know that Oxford has maintained a magnetic mystique for hundreds of years that has captured one more student, frightened of her possibilities and respectful of her accomplishments.

The Rights of Unborn Women

I saw this bumper sticker the other day on an old beat-up van that read, “Fight to Protect the Rights of Unborn Women.” It hit me so powerfully. I’m pretty involved with the pro-life movement, and while the idea of the bumper sticker seems so basic and fundamental, I’ve never connected the idea of women’s rights and the rights of the unborn in that way before. The way the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate is generally structured is with territorial, exclusive claims on the rights of the unborn and the rights of women, respectively. In actuality, the pro-choice movement seeks to eliminate the rights of the unborn entirely while the pro-life movement fights to support women along with the unborn.

It’s always been a sticky issue with the pro-life movement to combat the foundational slogan of the pro-choice movement: women deserve the right to control their own bodies. Feminists for Life have a wonderful motto that best defeats the principles of the pro-choice movement, I think: women deserve better than abortion.

The idea that women have the right to control their own bodies is extremely superficial, in my opinion. The pro-choice movement offers a convenient, instant-gratification solution to a woman who cannot afford her child or does not want the responsibility of caring for her child. It fails to support women who make the choice to not have an abortion, and it fails to support women with post-abortive healing. Having an abortion has lasting, profound consequences. It is one of the biggest decisions that absolutely cannot be taken back, undone, reversed. Women who choose to have an abortion risk higher chances of depression, abusing their other children, infertility, and life-long regret.

It seems so wrong to me to try to base an ethical decision on convenience. Since it would be really difficult to have a child, let’s just get rid of the child. It’s not really a human being yet anyway (see any similarity with “A Jew isn’t human, it should be exterminated”?). Ethics should be based on principles that hold true even in the most trying of circumstances. The pro-life movement sets out to fight for the children that are being lost in a holocaust of convenience. A country based on liberty and the rights of each human being should not legalize the sacrifice of its most vulnerable citizens.

I love the pro-life movement for its ethical integrity in supporting the unborn, its support of women who have chosen to have an abortion and need post-abortive healing, and its support of women who choose to keep their children alive. The pro-life movement doesn’t say, “Keep the baby. I know you’re poor, struggling, desperate, just make it happen.” I worked with a shelter in DC that counsels women who are pregnant, helps them find jobs, and provides them with diapers and baby formula and also shelter if they are abused or homeless. At school, we worked to meet the needs of student mothers, including free babysitting so they could remain in school, counseling, and the support of health, housing, financial, administration, and spiritual departments. Feminists for Life also asserts that abortion is a clear result of the needs of women not being met. America should increase its aid to pregnant, struggling women. We should not support a system that claims to ameliorate the problem of unwanted pregnancy while really it augments the problem by compromising the identity of America herself, who sacrifices caring for the helpless for the sake of convenience.

I love this movement which doesn’t lure women in with a quick fix and dooms them to life-long negative consequences. The pro-life movement doesn’t promote men not bearing the responsibilities of their choices and does not deprive them of being involved in the choice to kill their own children. Additionally, the pro-life movement does not inconsistently promote the rights of women by first victimizing women who choose to be sexually active (“that’s a shame that happened to you.”...as though the woman caught an illness rather than chose to have sex), then saying women suddenly have the power to control their own bodies when it comes to purging their wombs of the life they have created. So, essentially, the pro-choice philosophy takes away the cause (women choosing to have sex) and then must get rid of the result (the child isn't actually a life).

Women are made to be empowered if they liken their bodies to those of men: unable to bear children. Where is the feminism in that? It is a difficult, wonderful, complex power that women alone possess in being able to bear and nurture children in the womb. Feminism should support the whole woman, rather than reducing women to a body; it should recognize the implications in making a responsible choice with regards to sexual partners and spouses, the deep emotion that comes with finding out one is a mother, and the responsibility in providing for a child that one has created (even if it means giving up the child to a family that can better provide for him/her). I am proud to fight to protect the rights of women—the unborn, the struggling, and the lost.

That Persnickety, Persistent Patriotism

I have it, that little sticker that proudly declares “I voted.” For the second time, I have fulfilled my civic duty, realized my American freedom in democratically voting. The first time was an absentee ballot while I was at school; this felt different, more hometown, more personal, more grown-up. Realistically, the people I voted with at that little church probably voted for the same people that I did, from the same party that I voted for—which could be good or bad, depending on your perspective. It was awesome that I saw such large numbers of people voting today, though. I hadn’t expected that. After my Politics in America class at school, I am fully aware of the slacking nature of many, many Americans when it comes to politics. Activism is tiring. Politicians are all untrustworthy, won’t live up to their campaign promises, just in it for the limelight, money, power trip, whatever. But it heartened me, nonetheless, to see the persistence of my neighbors, townspeople, fellow citizens: they voted because they wanted to, were inspired to, value their freedom enough to use it, respect their government enough to participate.

I love categorizing, evaluating, contemplating the American public. Here I belong, among the material, flighty, moody American population. Where a sense of entitlement seems ingrained in the American identity, along with national pride and ignorance of the rest of the world. I belong in a land that literally celebrates its history without knowing its history. I witness people blaming the figurehead president for every ill, forgetting the soldiers dying, lumping the Middle East together as one foreign, depressingly persistent evil.

The rest of the world seems to think of the American people as a simple entity: selfish, arrogant, materialistic, and close-minded. I have witnessed a national pride, yes. A pride in family. A pride in genuine work-ethic. A pride in sharing the values of one’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather. I have seen a desire for more, newer, better, faster, stronger. A call for ingenuity and originality. America possesses the disparity between classes, races, and regions; and yet, somehow all those differences dissipate, evaporate really, at the sight of an American flag or the sound of a foreign threat. Not for more than a few seconds or minutes or weeks or months, but that unity when unleashed, when realized, is awesome. Scary. Full of possibility.

I’ve been reading The Handmaid’s Tale, which is the antithesis of freedom, liberty, individuality. It helped me to realize the freedom in merely wearing what I want to wear. Walking where I want to walk. And most importantly, reading what I want to read.

The women in Atwood’s story are forbidden from reading. They are condemned to their sole task as women in a new, improved America, where the constitution has been frozen, put on hold: to procreate. Not to love, laugh, live, flirt, learn, grow, change, think, experience, feel, challenge, exercise, or speak. The idea of not being allowed to read literally caused me twinges of physical discomfort, a grimace, an achy sense of loss. What is a mind, if not the ability to improve oneself, push oneself beyond circumstances and misfortunes, inadequacies and ignorance? What would a life be like where one not only was forced to hand over one’s body to be used and directed as ordered but also to be starved of intellectual, stimulating conversation, meaningful relationships, written communication, shared knowledge?

I’ve read in several different books with these alternate communistic realities the terrifying idea that even the news on television could be faked, manipulated. The idea of watching a recording, some edited version of reality and taking it for the real deal is crazy really. More than that, true control of information includes religious information; the faith, morality, spiritual lives of Atwood’s characters became programmed, directed, nationalized, manipulated, worthless. Propaganda seems like one of the most sophisticated forms of torture to me. To control the flow of knowledge, news, information is to control the lifeblood of a country’s citizens.

The Handmaid’s Tale is supposed to be a warning to society; that much is clear. What scares me a little bit is how I responded to the book: “That could never happen here, in my country, in my era.” And yet, what scared me the most is the idea that the issues that sparked the creation of the strict society were ones that haven’t changed since 1985, when Atwood wrote this book: sexual dissatisfaction and perversion, failure to communicate, fear of the “other,” focus on the self or the nuclear family to the extent that everything’s fine if my family is alive, I don’t have time to think about Congress being massacred or the President being executed or the Constitution being suspended.

This book haunts me a bit. The way in which men were reduced to power- and sex-hungry animals while women's rights were sacrificed so that they could be reduced to reproducing machines is troubling. Seems too extreme to be real but…the fact that it’s possible is true. It seems so coincidental to me that today I both finished The Handmaid’s Tale and voted. That I celebrated America as she is while contemplating the gruesome possibility that she could be utterly perverted. It makes me thankful, profoundly grateful for the security I feel. It caused me to push down my isn’t-everyone-already-a-feminist-these-days attitude to acknowledge the alternative. I’m so glad to watch our heatedly debated “biased” news programs, because nonetheless the flow of news has a basis of truth which its citizens trust. It’s a simple thing, but I am proud to be an American voter today.