I am four years older than the kid that cried at the airport, four years more certain of who I am and four years more confident. But I’m not quite sure of all that much, except that the past four years have been good.

Graduation is the nudge that gets us out of college and into the real world.

Words in a column, book or a speech, for that matter, mean nothing without action to supplement them.

At 15 years old, I already harbored fantasies of bylines containing my name. If that were the whole story it would, of course, be a very boring one. My path up till now must look nauseatingly straightforward from the outside. But like most students, my years at Penn have been anything but simple and very different from what I expected.

I began May Day eager to see a space that embodied the movement’s values. However, after 12 hours of activism, this other world that Occupy was trying to create seemed messy and racked by many of the contradictions that haunted the New Left in the 1960s.

We all know from experience that the perception of time passing is not constant. Just think about how quickly the hour of an exam can fly by or how slowly an hour lecture can.

I’ll be leaving on a jet plane. Soon — I mean, relatively soon. I’m studying abroad in London next semester. Now that classes are over, that statement actually feels like it means something.

Ironically, the knowledge I have gained from my liberal arts education is exactly what has made the reward for its completion confounding.

Open dialogue between the sexes at Penn is just not happening because the “game” we subscribe to requires crafty disingenuity.

Young people are often lamented for their lack of organization and mobilization around youth causes. But I’m not sure if this will ever shift, because young people hold such varied political viewpoints.

The Class of 2016 — who will be joining us next fall — promises to be more diverse and representative of the shifting demographics in this country. The increased diversity creates new potential to unite students from all walks of life.

Penn’s current policy encourages students to become repeated offenders and develop poor health habits.

No one can be defined. Asian Americans, through all their struggles, are not asking to be viewed as comic book victims or heroes.

The whole weekend is built around the idea of the momentary. After all, that’s why they call it a “fling.”

It would be naive to think that the obnoxious type-A personalities that helped many of us get here in the first place disappeared after our matriculation.

From the guys at Allegro’s who served us pizza at 3 o’clock in the morning, to the accepted students who toured Penn for the very first time — we were curious about how Fling fared for those on the periphery.

Our culture — especially the microcosm of Penn — values effortlessness, or perhaps more accurately, the appearance of effortlessness.