“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”

-Seneca.

Oxford is the kind of beautiful that places a gentle hand on your shoulder and urges you to take a seat, your eyes cast to its fawn colored edifices all the while. It’s the kind of beauty that coalesces past and present with such finesse you almost wish to congratulate it somehow, to pat it on the back for remaining stoic amid centuries of storms and combat and intellectual pursuit and discovery and loss.

In spite of it all, or perhaps because of it all, Oxford endures. Nay, Oxford flourishes.

My visit began with the familiar pitter-patter of English rain, dousing the time-honored city in grays and browns and puddles where the cobblestones were uneven.

My primary intention was to see as many of Oxford’s 38 colleges as I could, which proved slightly difficult as they’re all discreetly scattered  across the city. Additionally, our timing was not ideal– we showed up during many of the students’ final exams, meaning a great deal of the buildings were closed off to public viewings, and tours were almost completely unavailable. For a prospective student, this was unsettling. Also daunting for this doe-eyed Oxford wannabe was the ceremonial attire worn by each student exiting or entering his/her exams. For girls: black tights, black shoes, formal black skirt and scholarly looking vest that wore more like a cloak than a casual cover to the pristine white blouse beneath it. And, the most interesting part? The carnations pinned to each student’s shirt. Each student wore one of three colors: red, white, or pink. We asked a young woman (she was unmistakably a student…That outfit! That perceptible twinkle of Oxfordian intelligence in her eyes!) what the meaning of the three various colors of the carnations were, and she answered plainly. “The white means you’ve just finished your first exam, the pink means you’ve just finished your second, and the red means you’ve finished your last.”

It was a tradition that felt both old and new all at once, like the students partaking in it presently were starting it all over again simply by bringing their excitement and novelty to the ancient air of the school. I couldn’t help but dwell on just how many students had participated in this simple, good-natured practice over the course of Oxford’s history, and how many still had yet to join.

We passed the unmissable Radcliffe Camera, posing resplendently against the sky. With the study-weary, carnation-bearing students trotting by in their Harry Potter-esque apparel, I felt as though I had a glance into something quintessentially “Oxford.”

At last, the sun began to peek through its gauzy, white-gray curtains and saturate this old town in warm illumination. We wandered into Balliol College, one of the oldest (founded in 1263) and most beautiful constituent colleges of Oxford. If you are to see any of Oxford’s colleges (and it would be quite time-consuming to see them all), take a stroll through Balliol.

Everything seemed greener after the rain; even the walls of the old buildings seemed to sparkle a bit in the glare of the fresh sun. I imagined living here, walking through these pathways and narrow stone arches to attend classes or visit the historic library to read, where so many brilliant minds had studied before me. Oxford is full of this funny concurrency, like the brainpower of past scholars still vibrates within the city limits.

I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the level of comprehension necessary to attend the prestigious school of Oxford, nor to consider myself in even the same stratosphere as greats like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

But, strolling around the heavily trodden thoroughfares of one of the finest universities in the world, it was nice to imagine that maybe such brilliance exists in all of us.