POSTCARD FROM OXFORD: The Road to Northampton

OXFORD, ENGLAND—Boe knows 18-wheelers. Boe knows organic vegetables. And by the end of the summer, Boe will know Twelfth Night, short fiction and the intricacies of international law.

Among 60-some-odd American college students studying at Trinity College in Oxford this summer, Barbara “Boe” Morgan is going to classes and learning the customs like everyone else. But sit down to afternoon tea with her and she’ll tell you about growing up with seven brothers and sisters, living in an organic gardening commune in southern New Hampshire and driving for decades on the interstates of America.

With a little prodding, she might even mention her leading role in the Brattleboro Ballet School’s spring show.

After hearing all Boe’s extraordinary stories, her present situation seems incongruously tame: she’s in the midst of her sophomore year at Smith College. Unlike those of us for whom college was the unquestionable post-high school destination, Boe has diverted from the established path a hundred times in life. Coming to Oxford to study Shakespeare, fiction writing and international law is another route she might never have expected to take.

After high school, one of her first jobs was in a mail-order company where women made $3 an hour for working the line. Boe decided to load mail trucks with the guys for a 50-cent raise in pay. At 21, she was driving a meat truck around the North Shore, braving slaughterhouses and blood-covered butchers to haul crates of beef. Not long after, she was driving 18-wheelers. All jobs that relatively few Smith students have on their college resumes.

She spent seven years driving a route to Cape Cod, chilling with the locals and going to the beach. “I could have driven that route for the rest of my life,” she recalls. But when she was reassigned, her focus shifted just a bit. Inspired by nieces and nephews who were Internet savvy, she enrolled in a computer course at a local community college. One course became four—besides computer basics, she enrolled in Political Science, English 101 and a history class on Critical Issues of the Holocaust.

And something struck home. “I discovered the intellectual chemistry that happens in a classroom. It was like I got a sip of water and didn’t even know I was thirsty.”

It wasn’t long before Boe outgrew what the community college had to offer, and one of her professors encouraged her to apply to continuing education programs at local colleges like Smith and Mount Holyoke. Her initial reaction? Fright. “I’d rather take a trailer into Manhattan during rush hour,” she remembers thinking.

At 43 years of age, she applied. Smith admitted her to its elite Ada Comstock Scholars Program, an academic program for women of what the school gently refers to as “nontraditional age.” A sociology major, Boe says she’s considering law school and working in immigration or labor law. (Harvard Law admissions officers, take note.)

That’s not to say she’s a stereotypical Smithie: While thousands of college students volunteer in soup kitchens or classrooms during their undergraduate years, Boe’s community service group of choice is the Moving Violations, a Boston-based women’s motorcycle club that aids local fundraisers and runs events of its own.

And she’s still driving. “My personality is well-suited to that profession,” she says, recalling the regulars she would visit on her Cape Cod route. “It’s restored my faith in humanity. And the visual world is just amazing,” she adds. Between the wildlife she’s spotted along highways and her encyclopedic knowledge of regional geology gained by driving on mountain roads, it’s surprising that “park ranger” isn’t on her lengthy curriculum vitae.

Even now, she admits to being at a nexus; driving her truck and taking classes, doing her homework at 4 in the morning, falling asleep in the library, staying awake behind the wheel. A severe shoulder injury at work in October has forced her to look at things with a new perspective and wonder if it’s time to concentrate all her energies on education.

“It’s hard to let go of that safe little cab of my truck where I’m queen of the world,” she says. “But my life is moving forward in a different direction. This [program in Oxford] is the bridge.”

So why am I telling you about Boe?

Listening to her story, I realized how much I’ve taken for granted. College was a given for me; it never occurred to me that I would go anywhere else after high school. Where else was there to go? And I can count on one hand the number of students I know who took even a year off before deciding to apply to school.

Most of us blindly followed the Chance card that sent us from high school graduation to Harvard matriculation; Go Directly to College. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. We barely allowed three months to pull ourselves together and really consider the journey.

But Boe drew again. And while she eventually ended up on the Boardwalk of higher education with everyone else, she probably has a much deeper appreciation for it. Boe’s road to Smith has been long and complex—and an education in and of itself.

Veering off the path can be the scariest thing imaginable. Boe knows that. All the same, she reminds me, “There’s a lot of magic in the world if you’re open to it.”

Jonelle M. Lonergan ’02, an English concentrator in Winthrop House, is photography chair of The Crimson. This summer, she is working as a junior dean at Trinity College and developing a taste for beers other than Guinness.