Once, during a talk with M, he mentioned childhood in a way I had never thought of before. "These four years are your childhood," he said. I had always thought childhood was defined by age. But maybe childhood is an environment: the freedom to explore what you want, pursue the things your heart leaps at, try them out, re-evaluate, try again. Four years of trying. Four years to see the world.

I'm one twelfth of the way through, and I think I've done alright. I visit San Francisco weekly, and I've found restaurants that beat their counterparts back home, which is saying something. I feel genuinely happy every time I think about X. I'm friends with people that are, in all honesty, gods to me. I've watched the sun set from the roofs of campus buildings and watched it rise again. I've crashed my bike twice. I would like to think that this is what childhood looks like.