Dear Hilary Term,
I thought I knew what was coming. That you’d go easy on me—peaceful afternoons sitting on the cool stone ledge of New College’s cloisters, watching pollen drift like snow through the courtyard. Instead, you pulled back the curtains and left me blinking in light that exposed everything I was avoiding.
You whispered: What are you most scared of?
And so, I began to search. In the sanctuary of the Bodleian's storied reading rooms. On train rides to London with Oxfordshire’s countryside blurring past. Under amber lamplight during evening walks home through High Street.
Slowly, I noticed: the city felt different—like a map unlocking itself. The buildings that once looked like someone else’s story started to hold pieces of my own—colleges, restaurants, and quirky little shops now replaying moments I wanted to keep. Walking past, I remembered: that special dinner where our eyes met across the table—'We're actually here’; all the nights we swore we'd study but talked and laughed until 1am instead; the times you rewrote my beliefs.
One morning at a little café on Broad Street, I watched a woman hand the barista a neatly wrapped box of chocolates and a handwritten card. She was finishing her Oxford fellowship, she explained, and thanked them for brightening her mornings.
I stood there, clutching my usual iced matcha latte, and felt something shift.
I had been holding my breath for months. Somewhere along the way, I’d convinced myself that ambition meant efficiency, that success required a kind of polished hardness. When everyone around you is chasing coveted job offers and lofty salaries, it’s easy to forget the girl who wrote that application essay—the one yearning for impact.
But there was this woman, wrapping chocolates like she had all the time in the world.
Standing in that queue, I finally understood what I’d been running from. Not failure—but worse. I’d been running from the fear that being myself might not be enough. That caring too much was too much heart, not enough savvy. But what if staying soft in a demanding world isn’t weakness—what if it’s the most daring thing you can do?
Oxford doesn’t just teach you to think—it teaches you to choose. Every day, in a hundred small ways, Oxford teaches you who you’re becoming: the version of you who optimises for accolades or purpose. The version of you who finishes chapters and doesn’t look back, or who wraps chocolates for strangers.
I'm learning that success isn't reaching a destination—it's about creating spaces where people feel like they belong. It’s doing stand-up comedy for the first time, praying people laugh (and by some grace, they did). It’s honing your craft, even when no one else is watching. Success is having the courage to chart your own path. To find the thing that quiets the noise. To pursue what makes your eyes light up.
The pollen still drifts like snow in New College's courtyard. You never promised me peaceful afternoons, did you? Instead, you gave me the courage to leap off the ledge and start… running. We don’t have to watch the story unfold—we can write it.
Yours truly,
Margarita
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