Surprised by Oxford

Carolyn Weber's memoir recounts her first year as a graduate student at Oxford University, where she arrived expecting to study Romantic literature and instead underwent a conversion to Christianity. The book is structured around the Oxford academic calendar, whose three terms, Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity, are rooted in the Christian liturgical year.

As an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario, Carolyn presented a feminist analysis of John Donne's poetry to Dr. Deveaux, her elderly professor. He told her she had missed the poem's point, urging her to use her education as a "bullshit detector." When she returned to follow up, she learned he had died in his chair just after tallying final grades, pencil in hand. Before departing for England on a scholarship, she encountered Alexander Pope's epigram asking who one's master is and answered confidently that she was her own.

Carolyn arrived at Oxford in October 1994 carrying heavy baggage, both literal and figurative. Her father's financial ruin and erratic disappearances had shattered her family. Her mother, a daughter of immigrants, worked her way up from a low-wage secretarial job, while her older brother assumed a paternal role at great personal cost. Carolyn maintained a full scholarship, built emotional walls through reason, and identified as agnostic. She arrived informally engaged to Ben, a self-declared atheist, to study the Romantic poets. When she finally found Oriel College, she spotted the Latin inscription "REGNANTE CAROLO" on the portico, which contained her childhood nickname "Caro," a detail she tried to dismiss as coincidence.

During orientation, Carolyn formed an eclectic circle of friends: Hannah, a blunt British student; Linnea, a fellow Romanticist; Dorian, a Middle Eastern convert to Christianity; Rachel, raised by missionary parents; Mark, a Vietnamese-American Christian studying Hebrew; and Michael, an Irish priest. At the matriculation social, she met the man she calls TDH (Tall, Dark, and Handsome), a loud American who spoke warmly about his family's poverty. When he demonstrated email on his computer, she accidentally read a friend's message recommending a "super godly" virgin as a potential match. Horrified, she assumed the worst but agreed to hear him out.

In TDH's room, Carolyn heard the Christian gospel explained for the first time. He asked who Jesus was to her, and she realized she had no real answer. He explained the core claims without jargon: Humanity is separated from God by sin; Jesus became man, died, and rose to restore that relationship; salvation is a gift of grace, not earned. He revealed that he was a virgin by choice and that his father was a pastor. Over the following months, she bombarded TDH with questions. His patience spoke to her more powerfully than any argument, which infuriated her. She began slipping into St. Mary's Church each morning to read a borrowed Bible.

At the formal Christmas high table dinner, the guest of honor, Dr. Sterling, a brilliant scientist who uses a wheelchair, argued that his research had only confirmed the brilliance of God's design. When a waiter asked him what the strongest force in the universe is, he answered: "Love."

Carolyn's engagement to Ben unraveled when she challenged him: Without something larger than themselves, their promises had no foundation. Over Christmas, she told him she could not marry a man who refused to consider kneeling. He left a Neruda poem on her pillow: "I hope you find your God." At home, Carolyn told her mother she was thinking of becoming a Christian. When her mother protested that she could not believe in a God who would sacrifice His only Son, Carolyn responded: "Mom, how can we believe in a God who wouldn't?"

Back at Oxford for Hilary Term, her resistance continued to erode. When TDH insisted on walking between her and the traffic, she exploded at him, unleashing years of rage about absent, disappointing men. He stood firm but compassionate, refusing to be her "whipping post for men gone wrong." The next morning, she apologized, and he forgave her instantly. She thought: "This is what grace must feel like." At a lecture, the prominent postmodernist critic Dr. Condorston argued that truth is entirely relative. Singled out, Carolyn declared she believed in absolute truth: "Absolutely!"

On the eve of Valentine's Day, after leaving a drunken college party in disgust, Carolyn opened her Bible to the Gospel of John. As she read, tears fell, and everything became clear: She knew Jesus is who He said He was. She recalled the father in Mark's Gospel who cries, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" She prayed the same desperate prayer. St. Mary's chimed midnight. She stayed up all night reading Genesis from the beginning.

The months following her conversion brought both exhilaration and difficulty. She attended a passion play at Coventry's ruined cathedral on Good Friday and experienced the crucifixion viscerally. Rachel taught her a metaphor for enduring pressure: A metal spoon in a teacup prevents the china from cracking under heat. She spent Easter with Regina, a Christian professor who told her that grounding her identity in Christ would give her courage.

When Miss Georgia, a stunning Christian woman, arrived to visit TDH after her parents arranged a meeting with TDH's family, Carolyn felt devastated by inadequacy. Alone in St. Mary's afterward, she confronted her shame and envy, recognizing these feelings lived within her already. At the church's candle stand, where she had always placed her candle on the lowest rung, she realized grace meant she could light it at the very top. TDH took her to the top of St. Mary's spire, where Oxford spread below in diamonds of light. He told her: "The really amazing thing about grace is that it takes you even beyond the top rung." When she asked about Miss Georgia, he grinned: "She's a nice breeze, but she's no stiff gale," looking directly at Carolyn.

On Trinity Sunday, a Christian feast day during the final term, Carolyn was baptized in the Thames. Friends gathered with gifts. Hannah, not yet a believer, admitted: "I want the same thing that you have. But I'm just not there yet."

On TDH's last night before flying to Washington, D.C., Carolyn joined him for a final drive through Oxford. As she watched him drive away, she realized she loved him and ran barefoot through the rain after his car. She opened his envelope to find a hand-drawn question mark and folded it into her Bible: "It's okay to live the unanswered questions."

Before leaving Oxford, Carolyn wrote to Mrs. Deveaux, the widow of her late professor. Mrs. Deveaux replied with a leather-bound edition of Donne's poetry and counsel: "Grace begets grace." Her inscription read: "A bullshit detector makes a great homing device."

In the epilogue, two years after her conversion, roses arrived on Carolyn's birthday bearing a question mark from TDH. Three years after her conversion, she and TDH married, his father officiating in Washington, D.C. Fourteen years later, Carolyn reflects as a wife, mother of three, and professor of literature. She recalls the matriculation photo from her first week, when fog obscured the camera until TDH's voice rang out asking everyone to hold their breath. The air cleared and the camera clicked, a moment she treats as symbolic. The picture hangs in their living room, "proof that the fog can clear as the result of one voice."