I was totally in love for I’d say my first year and a half. All of a sudden I was in this completely new environment with such dynamic, motivated, interesting people. People who really weren’t afraid to use their minds in different ways, and that was really inspiring.

And then I sort of got the itch to experience a new and different bubble, and that’s when I went abroad for a semester to Senegal and Western Africa, and that was super-intense and different from Harvard. And then I came back and it was a more focused finish, narrowing it down and appreciating these incredible individuals in a different way.

My favorite thing were the people. My least favorite thing was that there were a lot of neurotic people, really type A neuroses, and you’re around all these people and they have so much to give, but it also breeds those neuroses in you. And they’re geniuses and it was a bit intimidating.

I moved out here three years ago. I had a of friends who were like “West Coast? What are you doing?” But there are so many incredible artists here. My understanding of what it is to be like intelligent has also shifted. I think there’s academic intelligence, there’s artistic intelligence, there’s worldly intelligence, and they all interact and intersect in different ways.

I like the beach. I like the weather. I miss leaves changing in the fall from the east coast and the idea of seasons, but having lived through a couple of really intense winters in Boston, I don’t know that I actually miss that so much.

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