On impulse, I moved to Paris when I was 18. I figured trading in frat parties and dorms for the Louvre and the Palais Garnier was a better way to begin a math degree. It wasn’t the wisest idea.

Paris was glamorous, exciting, and filled with adventure. It was also lonely and embattled by insurgent terrorism and increasingly hostile tensions between political and ethnic minorities. For every day I spent watching the sun set over the Champ de Mars with strangers or dancing in the basement of the Palais de Tokyo, there were others spent aimlessly wandering around the streets of Passy, feeling listless, alone, and furious at myself for begging my parents to let me move to a country where I knew no one and had a high-school level linguistic competency.