Oxford,

      I've always been proud of Ball State University.  I know it's not the greatest school in the world. But for our size and our location we hold our own.  My honest feelings have always been that I wouldn't rather be at any other school...  but then I went to Oxford.
      We're talking about a school so historic that it is 4 times older than our country.  So prolific that its alumni include 40 Prime Ministers, around 50 Olympic Gold Medal winners, oh and 12 Saints! Not to mention the various authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, and Lewis Carroll.  Either this place has perfected the art of molding minds or the art of attracting them.
      As a lifelong reader of some of those names it was a rather spiritual experience for me to visit their Alma Mater.  Not to mention that several locations on the campus were used as sets in the Harry Potter films.  I was literally walking in the foot steps of Tolkien, Lewis, and Potter: the 3 most important names in fantasy literature.
       Being there it's easy to see how these guys could be inspired in such a fantastic way.  They merely had to emulate  their epic surroundings.  Tolkien sees the Norman Castle Mound and comes up with a Hobbit hole.  Carroll uses the secret door in the Great Hall and sees a rabbit hole.  Whether they meant to or not,  these guys couldn't help but incorporate their real-life experiences at this epic school into their fictional stories.
     But at the same time as I was so elated at visiting a place with such significance to me, I couldn't but think how Ball State paled in comparison.  This got me seriously depressed about my future prospects. I mean, I have no Libraries designed by Sir Christopher Wren to study in.  No cafeterias that were the inspiration for Hogwarts.  And I can't see Tolkien writing Lord of the Rings at effing Dill St.!
      Yet somehow I saw a glimmer of hope.  Maybe these people made their environment, not the other way around.  Maybe they were going to do what they did all along, and Oxford was actually lucky to have them.  And that was when I vowed to do the same for Ball State: to make my school proud, to give it a legacy... to make it my Oxford.