--- Sara Bronin, from a Bon Voyage speech to Rhodes scholars (2024?), The American Oxonian, Fall 2025, Volume CXII, Number 3
In context
Maybe best of all, I was able to hear my own voice for the first time [in Oxford]. When I was in undergrad, like you, I never stopped working: at a university of 48,000 people, chairing the student Senate, writing and organizing, working like a manic [sic] as an architecture student with endless studios. And I wasn't doing it for the Rhodes Scholarship: I'd never heard of it.
At Oxford, you will stop. You will have no choice! You will have few obligations. You satisfy them by showing up to tutorials or class, and to High Table the one time each year you're invited. As a result, perhaps for the first time, you will be alone with your thoughts. Listen to them. There's a chance you will hear something you never heard before. . . .
Reflection, 4/26/2026: I don't think I've ever stopped, in this sense of having few obligations. I don't think I've ever been alone with my thoughts other than during meditation retreats, which don't seem to count here. (On retreat, I felt a strong obligation to work hard and make the most of the time alone.) Perhaps being old is the time to stop.
