I’ve been spending the last few weeks at the near-mythic heart of global academia: Oxford, England. There’s something exhilarating about being in a place where the pursuit of knowledge is held sacred above all else. Tolkien studied here, as did CS Lewis and Philip Pullman and that guy from Monty Python.

Now, writers come here in hopes that those who walked these harrowed halls before them might have left some fragment of themselves behind. That just by touching the golden stone and walking these streets, we might absorb some tendril of the force that brought their stories to life. 



Plus, their libraries look like this:



And this:

Built on the bones of repressive, colonial elitism? Perhaps. 

Even though Oxford University was established way back in the 13th century, it wasn’t until 1920(!) that they began offering degrees to women. Even today, the colleges are made up of predominantly wealthy cisgender students and are overwhelmingly white. So what does that say about the roads available to everyone else?

It means that we can’t rely on society to clear the way for us. It means that we have to fight tooth and nail for everything that we’re given. 

Maybe we can't all travel the globe and earn degrees from the world's most prestigious universities. We may not be born into positions of financial or social privilege, or have the confidence to stand up against our own oppression. But we can still get our words onto the page. At the end of the day, that's the only thing that really matters. 

So wherever you are in the world, and whatever path you’re taking, remember that your voice is important. Get your stories out however you can and know that someone will be braver, stronger, and less alone because of them.