"My worries about conforming to some vague "Oxford Experience" have slipped
away with the realization that there isn't one, standard "Oxford Experience."
Likewise, it was a pleasant surprise to realize that there isn't an archetypical Rhodes Scholar, contrary to popular images in the U.S.  The "idea" of the Rhodes Scholar is as flexible and varied as the wider student body in Oxford."

Biography

Modupe Labode

21 October 1988

"I had vaguely known of Cecil Rhodes long before I knew of the scholarship; after all, Rhodesia was named after him.
As I became aware of the scholarship and his legacy in the political and social landscape of Southern Africa, it seemed
that the scholarship (the result of the interpretation of his will by the Rhodes trustees) was the only defensible thing 
he ever did.  When I applied for, and received, the scholarship, the irony of a black woman receiving the scholarship named for a man who was a white supremacist, and at best, indifferent to women, was not lost."  Visions Magazine, Summer 1989

9 December 1988

Having survived my first term here,
I'm not yet certain if I will survive
the Bodleian Library (founded in 1320, and containing 5 million volumes)...The first obstacle is determining what one wants.  There is no subject catalog, so
one must locate the book by author.  The catalog is divided into 
three parts: the pre-1920 catalog, the catalog from 1920 to the mid-1980s, and the optimistically titled "Interim catalog for acquisitions since the mid-1980s."  After locating the book, one has only to fill out an order slip, wait two hours and it's yours to read in the Library--Bodleian is not a lending library.