About UVA

…it is one of the few colleges in America I've seen that genuinely has a touch of Oxford to it. Most of our schools do not have that…not even Harvard and Yale, both of which tried so hard to be our national equivalent, our place of spires and Thames, medievalism and brick, gowned scholars and merry undergrads in straw hats gone punting…

But Yale, Harvard, others…they never quite got it. For all their struggles, they became simply urban schools. Oh, excellent schools of course, full of brains and ambition. But city universities all the same.

And the merry undergrads? The scholars in black robes? They grow more rare with every passing day. Replaced, you see, by striving careerists, professionalists, specialists… heads full of facts and performance enhancing drugs (Nootropics, I think the word is)… for whom the concepts of merriment and medievalism, let alone punting, seem genuinely ridiculous.

These others, these new men and women, they are what society says it values. They will succeed. They will go far.

But, I wonder, sometimes, will there ever come a time when these chill and perfect creatures, so hard and so strong, will awaken to the haunting question…

What is life for?