Felix Waite (12): All right, hi, Ivory.  

Ivory Geiger (12): Hello. 

Waite: All right, so, when did you find out about getting into Oxford?  

Geiger: So, I knew the date was the 13th of Jan. And from my extensive research online, I knew it was gonna be sometime early in the morning. And I knew this was gonna be absolutely horrible, because I would not be able to sleep at all. So, after all of Monday, anxiously waiting, I somehow fall asleep at like 9 o’clock at night. And then, I wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning, not knowing if it came out. And I couldn’t go back to sleep, obviously. So I checked my phone—still not out. [I] toss around in bed for an hour. And then I get an email from Magdalen College, and I’m like, “oh god, here we go.” 

 So I open it, and they’re, like, “Thank you for the admissions process. Attached is your letter of acceptance.” So, I’m like, “Okay, this is it.” I open it, and it’s, like, “We regret to inform you that Magdalen College has not been able to offer you a place this year.” I’m like, “oh god, no.” And then I keep reading, it’s like, “However, we are aware that another college is still considering your application. You’ll find out by the 20th of January, if you have gotten in.” And I’m like, “What? I didn’t know that they [do deferrals at] Oxford!” I thought it was going to be yes or no.  

And this is absolutely horrible. And now I obviously can’t sleep at all. And my mother is downstairs waiting. She got up early for me. So, after checking my email even more and going on the 6th form Reddit to see if anyone else had gotten results, which, like, everyone was getting results. So I was extremely annoyed that I was gonna now have to wait until the 20th to find out. So, I go downstairs. And my mom was like, “Did you get in?” And I’m like, “I don’t know!”  

…I decide to eat breakfast early at 5 AM and drive around to get my mind off of it. So, I drive down to Ballast Point Park, freaking out in the car on the way. And then I opened my phone, and I’m like, “Oh, I got a message from another college.” And my exact reaction when I opened this was, “Oh my god, I got in.” Like, I was expecting, screaming, crying. No, just, “I got in, oh my god.”  

So, I read my acceptance letter. I don’t need a 5 on AP Lit; I only need a 5 on AP Latin.  

Waite: Can you explain conditionals real quick?  

Geiger: Oh, yeah. So a conditional offer is to have your place confirmed at the college. You need to have certain scores on your AP exams. 

Waite: And for those who don’t know, can you explain the college system?  

Geiger: Oh, yeah, so, at Oxford and also Cambridge, it’s this giant school, like 20,000 something plus people. But it’s split into like, a little over 20 colleges, each of which having much less people. And that’s where your dorms are, that’s where you eat, that’s where you take all of your classes, your professors are there, all your classmates. And at Oxford and Cambridge, you interview specifically for the college. I interviewed with 3 colleges, none of which [were the ones that] ended up accepting me.  

Waite: Tell me a little bit more about your interview process.  

Geiger: Oh, so. First of all, I get my decision letter for getting an interview. This was the end of November, and I was expecting it for classics. It’s a 95% interview rate. So, pretty much everyone who applies is gonna be interviewed. Because, for something like classics, it’s not, like, STEM where you answer just questions, and they see how you are able to think about it, then obviously get the answer correct. It’s more conceptual, I guess, like, thinking about the concepts and how they apply to the real world, which you can’t really show on an admissions test.  

[You can show] “oh, I know Latin,” but I can’t describe what Latin is and why it’s important. So, they want to interview mostly anyone. So I get my interviews for Magdalen. And the 1st one, I was absolutely freaking out. I had no idea what I was going to be expecting. So, I get up extra early, because I couldn’t sleep the night before…I have my computer set up. It’s opened, and then I just sit there waiting for about an hour. I did open up some just random Latin passages to get my mind off of it and to, like, warm up, in a way.  

But the call starts, and then it’s a Latin passage, and I know what to do with that. I describe, like, all the different vocab intricacies, and just what I’m good at. And then, 2nd half of the interview [we started] talking about the wider purpose of what this Latin passage is. And I was on that high from the first half of the interview, and it just went downhill. 

And that’s when I really saw what I meant when I was looking [into the interview process]. Like, what interviews were going to be like when they said, “They really drill you, and they want you to know your stuff, and they want you to be uncomfortable, and they want you to say, ‘I don’t know.’”  

So I struggled. I tried to answer. I disagreed with them multiple times, and I just tried my hardest…And then, it was anxiety, just waiting for results today.  

Waite: So, you’re majoring in classics. This is kind of a loaded question, but why classics?  

Geiger: The answer that I gave on my personal statement, or the actual answer? [laughs]. 

Waite: Let’s go both.  

Geiger: So for my personal statement, I compared how the ancient world really reflects the modern world. So in Virgil’s Aeneid, the character Dido, [who] is a queen of Carthage, [is visited by Aeneas] after [he gets] kicked out of Troy by the Greeks. He sails across the Mediterranean and ends up at Carthage, and the queen gives him this great welcome, like he’s this great war hero. So he spends the time there, and then Dido starts falling in love with him. He starts falling in love a little bit with Dido. They have a scene in the cave. which is kind of self-explanatory. It’s actually a fade to black, but you know, it happens. They…it says they get married.  

Waite: All right, all right. Keep going.  

Geiger: But then [Jupiter], is like, “no, no, no. You need to go to Italy to found Rome.” And Aeneas is just like, “Okay, guess I’m leaving now.” So he’s like, “Bye, Dido,” hops on a ship, leaves, and then Dido starts freaking out, burns Carthage to the ground, and kills herself.  

And I’m like, why did Aeneas just do that? Like, he didn’t even care; everything he said about caring just seemed so superficial. He didn’t even care, really, about Dido. So I started thinking about this more, and I’m like, Is this what Virgil is trying to do? Is he trying to say [that the gods are] a metaphor for Augustus, the emperor at the time? How Augustus is just bossing people around, telling them, “You have to do this,” not caring about the emotions of people like Dido. 

The actual answer [is that] classics are just really cool and you get to speak a “dead” language. I just absolutely love learning about every tiny little thing I can, and everything just ties in so beautifully when looking at it.  

Waite: All right, so, how did how did your Latin journey start?  

Geiger: So, I was actually originally meant to take French.  

Waite: Uh-huh, and how did that change?  

Geiger: So, my orchestra teacher in middle school, Mr. Fox, was like, “Oh, you should take Latin because it’s similar to Italian,” and I put it to the back of my mind, didn’t really care. Then in the middle of summer, [on] the open house day [where] we get to go to Plant, the person who was walking us around was like, “Oh yeah, Latin’s great. You don’t need to, like, speak the language or write the language.” And I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s amazing. I need this.” 

So I messaged my guidance counselor, and I’m like, “Please, please!” So the year starts. We have our textbook, the Cambridge Latin course. And nothing against the Cambridge Latin course, it’s just not very good. But I did the work that I had. I did all the translations. I just did what I was told. And I think since I did what I was told, didn’t do, like, Google Translate, I was one of the top people in our class. But I didn’t care about Latin. I didn’t join Latin Club or anything.  

And then, in the beginning of 10th, I started being like, “I actually want to learn Latin, because I feel like I’m not really learning anything through these translations.” So, I find a new textbook series, Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. [Then, Mr. Henson] cajoled me into joining Latin Club. I really pushed myself to read through a lot of [Lingua Latina per se Illustata]. And by states, I had gotten most of the way through the book. Going through that process made me realize this is something I really enjoy, and something that I really want to do more.  

So the next year, I take Latin three and four, leading me to take AP [Latin] and [be] the first person to ever take [Latin five] this year. That’s when I really started focusing a lot more on Latin, but I was still kind of iffy because I took a lot of STEM classes that year, because that was still the main path I was looking at. About halfway through the year was when I read the Aeneid, and that whole process with Dido really pushed me to be like, yes, this is what I want to major in. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life.  

Waite: All right, we have a lot of interview [material], so I’m gonna leave that off with one last question. What are you most excited about for going to the UK, going to Oxford?  

Geiger: I just think being in an environment where I have more classes that have to do with the classics, besides just Latin every day. in having that environment that will really push me to become the best that I can at classics.  

Waite: Okay. Anything else you want to add?  

Geiger: No, I don’t think so.  

Waite: Okay, thank you.  

Geiger: You’re welcome.