Winter at Miami

Hey everyone. I hope you are enjoying the beginning of your holiday season. There has been a lot going on at Miami. Students are currently gearing up for finals as they get set to go home for a few weeks. But if there is anything I learned in my time as a student, and certainly as a working member of the university, it is that while it is fun to go home and see family in friends, after a few days you are ready to be back at Miami.

A question I always get asked when prospective students and parents learn that I am an alum is, “Was Oxford the type of place that you missed when you went home?” The answer is always the same. “Absolutely!”

Every winter I would go home after finals, take a two day nap that would be frequently interrupted by chores, see my friends and celebrate the new year. Then it would be January 2, 200_ and I would wonder why I was still at home in Chicago. Don’t get me wrong. The most important things to me are friends and family. But Oxford has that magical quality to it. It always calls you back. So much so, that I would volunteer at Winter Orientation not only to help new students, but to get back to what more and more became my home.

I love Oxford in the winter. Growing up, it isn’t winter if there isn’t snow, and while we don’t get nearly as much snow in Ohio as I did when I lived in Illinois, the beauty of a snowy Miami campus is breathtaking. Some of my best Oxford memories occurred in the winter—moments that will be with me forever. Here are two of my favorites.

In the winter of my sophomore year, Oxford had a rare blizzard. I was with six of my friends in a residence hall room and we were watching the weather as we debated the odds of classes being cancelled (they weren’t). We were hungry, and apparently blizzards are the only conditions in which establishments do not deliver food (pizza has been delivered during a tornado warning). So we called Bagel and Deli, who said that even though they wouldn’t deliver, if we came in they would make us bagels. So we put on our snow gear, tracked through campus in the blizzard and made our way Uptown. When we got to Bagel and Deli, my friends knew the person working there, so we talked to him for awhile as he couldn’t believe we had decided to leave the hall for bagels. As we thanked him and made our way back outside, he handed us a bag of popcorn and told us to take it. We earned it for making the trek uptown.

The second moment happened in the winter of my senior year. The university has an emergency text message system. When classes are cancelled or there is inclement weather, students who have signed up for the service receive a text message. As I sat in class, I could hear the vibration of everyone’s phone go off. Afternoon classes had been cancelled. I called my friends. We took everything we could find. Trays, garbage bags and sleds were taking to the giant sledding hill. There, the five of us joined, and I kid you not, at least 75-100 other students who found whatever they had and taking it sledding. We raced, took turns going off jumps, and had contests to see who could go the farthest down the hill. It was an absolute blast.

These are just two of many Oxford memories in the winter. I can guarantee that if you spend your next few winters in Oxford, you will be filled of winter memories that will be pulling you back to Miami as you drink hot chocolate on your couch at home wondering what your college friends are up to. I’ll give you a hint, they’re wondering what you are up to as well. And they’re already making plans for what to do when you get back to campus.