Unorthodox path: recent SOU graduate bound for Oxford

(Ashland, Ore.) — Achieving success wasn’t the issue for Taran Cross. He had risen to the position of vice president with a Medford-based healthcare technology company, despite dropping out of college soon after he began back in 2007. But he had unfinished business and higher ambitions.

“I dreamed of going to Oxford as a kid and, around 2018, I started having these profound feelings of regret that I hadn’t been the sort of person who could accomplish those dreams,” Cross said. “I felt like the opportunities of my life had passed me by and, despite having a successful career, that I had squandered my potential.

“Applying to SOU was my way of rejecting that negative thinking. I decided that I wasn’t going to let the failures of my past define me, and live the rest of my life with regret. If I wanted to go to Oxford, I was the only person who could stop me.”