What Would Frost Do?

It is with much sorrow that I have to accept my denial to study at Oxford this summer. The news came by post and fell into my hands like the scorching letter 'A'. My initial reaction was one of embarrassment, as I had configured a fantastical tour of London and the Abbey's with my closest friends and family. I still have not informed them of this defeat. My hope is they will forgive my premature planning and move on as if Oxford was never an option. The next stage was one of introspective reasoning. Where has my desire to write among pioneers of such a luxurious language led me? Am I to be relinquished among the doubts and insecurities, which plague English teachers, for the rest of my career? The apricot trees in Santa Fe mesmerized my imagination and I have been longing for the Tudor ceiling beams in desperate hopes of rekindling my love affair with words. The question that I am struggling with is the very same question I asked my sister only a couple of weeks ago: "What defines you?" I have to swallow my own response and say that this decision cannot define me. The things which define me are around me on a daily basis, and a passport will not add to that definition. I will be spending my summer in Vermont, at the flagship campus on which Robert Frost professed his admiration for the students. The golden buildings that rise out of the sparkling snow in February will be my home. Though I have yet to see them among the spouting grass in summer, I cannot think my father was wrong when he detoured our drive to Burlington to let me know what future could be awaiting me. Tudors will have to wait, for now, as I begin this new affair with the history of Bread Loaf among the whispers of Seamus Heany and the camaraderie of Frost enthusiasts. Each semester I begin my classes with a reading of "The Road Not Taken"; this poem has sentimental meaning to many readers, yet mine comes from my own father's recitation of it during my bleakest moment. "Honor" is not what I feel as I accept my post among the brilliant landscape in Vermont, which is only accessible from the back roads. I am humbled and ecstatic, with the knowledge that my father would never steer me in the wrong direction.