Exercises in Thought: I Fell in Love at Oxford
St Catherine’s College bell tower
By Tim Carroll ’25
Ah, it’s so good to be back, but it’s even better to see you again.
My life recently has been marked by clichés. During my semester abroad, in the winter to summer of 2024, underneath the dreaming spires of Oxford University, I turned over the familiar phrases in my head — “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.” “You never know how much someone means to you until they’re gone.”
First, there was that familiar feeling that I was in over my head, like the opening scene of a coming-of-age movie. After my transatlantic flight, I sat on the Oxford Airline bus departing London Heathrow airport. I looked out the window to find dozens of sheep in between long cobblestone fences, grazing the British countryside on a dull gray morning. At that moment, I felt as if I had snapped out of a dream. I realized that I was thousands of miles away from home, in a foreign country, where I knew no one and practically nothing about where I was going — what have I done?
Moreover, my time abroad also had that classic pattern of the naive college student who leaves the nest and, at first, struggles to adjust to the various particularities of the new culture (even if they are ultimately minute), but who ultimately becomes a more independent and flexible adult afterward.
But more than any other clichés, the one that rang the truest was that, from the moment I stepped foot on British soil, I missed you more than anything else.
At first, I missed the little things that make you special: the accent, the greasy, salty, oversized portions of food, the different license plates from each state, the street signs. But all those were really just signs pointing towards my larger spiritual longing for you, America.
Yes, I didn’t realize that I was such an American until I left America. I didn’t realize how much I loved America until I left America. I have definitively self-identified as a patriot in the past. (And I would be remiss if, in this campus and cultural climate, I didn’t qualify that I believe that one can love America because of the core promises it continues trying to fulfill, even when it falls short of those promises.) But my passion for America has grown more than tenfold since I was separated from it. And, even then, of all the places to visit, the United Kingdom is one of the few which is not vastly different from the United States. After spending five months away from my birthplace and home, I fell in love with America at Oxford.
If a cliché still has meaning and rings true for you, should you still call it a cliché? Or should you call it an aphorism? Whatever; even if the idea that studying abroad makes one appreciate their home country is trite, so be it. That was my experience. Obviously I now have a greater appreciation for different cultures and places, but absolutely nothing compares to the renewed passion that I have for the United States. Out of all the immigration and customs lines I waited in throughout my travels in Europe, none were quite as long, hot, and physically unsavory as the line I waited in at Chicago O’Hare airport as my semester abroad ended. But it was the sweetest immigration and customs line of my whole life. It was filled with people of all creeds and colors but which were all distinctly American, and I really felt the beauty of America’s diversity at that moment. Even if this message is cliché, and it has been beaten to death in pop culture and student blogs, some things do just have to be experienced firsthand to be learned.
At some level, my newfound love for America is more irrational than not. I don’t doubt that I love certain elements of America (or just America itself) just because I was brought up here, just like how I love certain elements of New Jersey because I’m from there. They’re familiar, associated with home, and thus comfortable. At another level, my love for America is way too rational, bordering on a pedantic nerdiness. I breathed a mental sigh of relief upon landing in the United States, appreciating the presence of an enumerated bill of rights and a president elected through the power of the people. (Can you believe they’re still hashing out the monarchy debate in the Oxford Student newspaper?) I’m not some jingoist ultranational fanatic after my time abroad. But I do have a renewed emotional connection to this place. I had to step away from America to properly observe its spirit, the same way you might need to step back from a painting to appreciate its composition. And wow, America is so beautiful, and strange, and exceptional, and grotesque, and brilliant. Some people go abroad and want to stay abroad, which changes their life. I know my life has been changed insofar as I know I want to stay in America, because I realized I’m an American at heart.
Granted, studying abroad has changed my life in further incredible ways. I will refer to one particularly impactful way which happens to be relevant to this column: Going abroad gave me the space and time to think. Life at Oxford (at least how I lived it) was slower and simpler compared to the average overloaded and overcrowded American undergraduate schedule. Of course, during term, I had much thinking to do about coursework as I staggered under the weight of my tutorials. What is more relevant, however, is the six-week spring break between terms where I had nothing to do except travel and think about myself as I journeyed across Europe. It’s another cliché that some of the best study abroad experience comes from being outside the classroom. But I insist that this is nonetheless especially funny given that I chose to study abroad somewhere I’d be locked up in a library for most of my time there.
Thinking about yourself and your life is one of the most valuable activities to spend your time on, and I believe in it strongly enough to take the space here to elaborate. We are steeped in a milieu that prioritizes tangible career readiness on resumés overloaded with internships, jobs, classes, volunteer hours. Spending hours in reflective thought on the trajectory of your life is, at best, hard to distill for an employer or graduate school hiring committee, and, at worst, risks making you feel “unproductive.” Yet I want to be clear that I’m advocating for the opposite of participation in this frantic rat-race. I’m not advocating for what we currently call “self-care,” nor for an extreme manifestation of it as “bed rotting.” I’m not advocating for that curious phenomenon that befalls us Gen-Z’ers with nothing to do, the state of “depressive hedonia” seeking pleasure by scrolling or consuming, all of which has the effect of preventing us from thinking.
If there’s anything I would recommend to the thoughtful Amherst student — and particularly to any newly-minted freshman who happens to be reading this curious article — it would be to sit or walk in nature or some other beautiful place with no music or podcasts in your ear and to think for hours and hours. (Ideally, you can do so while traversing the ancient monuments of Europe, but make do with what you have.) See what bubbles up to the surface of your mind and think about why it does so. Where have I been, where am I going, how do I feel about it, and why? What is meaningful and what is meaningless? What legacy do I want to leave? Ideally we would have days and weeks to do this, but as students in 2024, we may have to suffice with hours.
Reflections on thinking aside, what’s clear, tangible, and distinctive about my experience abroad is that I fell in love with my home country. I am resilient and adaptable enough that I did enjoy my five months abroad, befriending a new group and engaging with life in a variety of ways. The United Kingdom, and the University of Oxford, is a lovely place to study abroad. You should study abroad if you can. But one of the biggest takeaways from my experience abroad is that I love America, its people, its failures and successes, its laws, its promises, its hopes and dreams. I will think and fight and die for this place.
This post is an excerpt from the ‘Exercises in Thought: I Ran a Relationship Advice Column at Amherst/I Fell in Love at Oxford’ joint article in the September 4, 2024 issue of The Amherst Student