Four Years Ago
Four years ago I was a sophomore at Stanford, an erstwhile chemistry major, miserably spending most of my day in the lab determining phosphate and nitrate content of fertilizer, with plans to graduate at the end of my junior year and not look back. It would be more than a year until I switched majors to computer science.
Four years ago a forest fire raged to within 700 of feet of my house. As we evacuated, a giant wall of fire consumed an entire mountain in the rearview mirror. This was two days before I left for school. After the fire, my parents called to tell me they were getting a divorce.
Four years ago I watched as the election was stolen from right underneath us by Supreme Court judges who believed that white people deserve equal protection but black people don't.
Four years ago I didn't vote.
Today I did.