I just finished a teacher training situated at Oxford University. Sitting here now in my London hostel, I find that I’m not missing the famed dreaming spires of the medieval city-turned-university. I’m missing the new friends and camaraderie of the past few days.
What I just experienced was one of those rare times when a group coalesces and transforms into a cohesive whole, distinct in its individual aspects, but at the same time, unified in its members’ sense of community. We come from schools on almost every inhabitable continent; we hail from countries around the world. And yet, in the confines of our classroom, we became first classmates, then colleagues, then finally friends. I have never been in such a quickly close-knit group before. Looking around the room this last session today, it hit me that I had made a connection with each of my twelve new friends over the past few days. For an introvert like me, that’s quite a feat!
I’ve learned to accept with gratitude the beautiful twists of fate that place me in situations like this one, in this class, with these twelve people. We don’t often get moments like this one, when thirteen strangers became friends over a period of roughly sixty hours.
More than the spires, more than the cobblestones, more than even the libraries—when I think of Oxford, I will forever remember the twelve beautiful people I now am fortunate enough to count as friends.
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