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Walking back to Radcliffe Square, I thought of something my mother used to read to me. It was a passage from a book by her favorite naturalist, Wendell Berry. In it he offers advice to those about to enter the wilderness. “Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place,” he wrote, “there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.”

Eight years earlier my mother had carried his words with her into the hospital. I’d found them neatly copied in her handwriting on a piece of paper in her handbag, the one I took home from the hospital after she died. She’d taken them with her to prepare for the journey ahead of her. It was to be her last trip, one that would take her into a new kind of wilderness, an unmapped territory known only to those who entered it.

Still, I knew that every small wilderness we enter—even one composed only of the unfamiliar streets of Oxford—offers a chance to practice for the larger one that lies in all our futures.

The course on “The English Village and Cottage Life” focused on the history of village life in England and how these small communities shaped the character of the English people. I found the lectures to be mixed: some quite stimulating, others deeply boring. Lectures on England’s land migration patterns, for instance, simply did not do it for me. Still, others in the group seemed intensely interested in the same lectures I found dry and statistical.

At least, that’s the impression conveyed by the fury of their note-taking and the number of questions they asked during such lectures. This kind of academic zeal often sent Ellen, a hip New Yorker with a sarcastic streak, into orbit. “What is it with this note-taking and question-asking?” she’d hiss into my ear. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on trying to be the smartest kid in class?”

The answer, I could have told her—but didn’t—was: no, there is no statute of limitations. I knew this to be true because occasionally during a class I found myself listening not only to Ellen’s mocking comments but to those of an inner companion as well: “Perhaps,” this companion—whose name was Insecurity—whispered to me, “you’re just not as smart as the others.”

At such times I reminded myself that life was not a test and no one was grading me. Except my own superego, of course.

As the days passed and the group settled into the routine of lectures followed by trips out into the English countryside, I realized how much life at Oxford resembled life in high school. Small groups formed, hints of romance surfaced, complaints about the lodgings arose, rumors flew.

“Did you hear about Jane and Mike?” a classmate asked at breakfast one morning. “They’re gone. Just up and left. No one knows why.” But everyone had a theory. As the day progressed, several explanations emerged for Jane and Mike’s abrupt departure, ranging from sudden illness to impending divorce.

I loved it. All of it. I loved being back in a learning situation surrounded by opinionated, smart, and complex people. I loved the political arguments that started at dinner and ended hours later in a pub on the High Street. I loved the rumors and the gossip. I even loved watching the way in which small circles formed and broke away from the group. I saw it as a valuable lesson in the psychology of how people select—often after an initial mis-selection—the company they prefer to keep.

All of it, even the occasional petty or snide observation made by one person or another, I found endearing. Endearing because it was so human. I viewed the group, myself included, with a lenient, familial eye, one that ultimately valued our connectedness over everything else.

Of course, caught up in the group dynamics of the situation, we were in fact functioning as a family. Although the hierarchy was blurred—sometimes one group seemed dominant, at other times not—we all had