I do some of my best writing on rides home. There is something about transition that pulls the right degree of nostalgia and tranquility out of me, a need to grapple with what has happened and assess calmly what is to come, to sway peacefully with my pen and my train-car. Graduating is nothing like that. It’s more like being dropped out of an airplane without a parachute. Or, rather, with a parachute made from Iliads and back-of-the-envelope calculations. And, like Columbia College, the time has come for Now!Here to drop me from its ranks. (Although, rest assured, I resist stigmatizing the lurking alum, as I will be she, at least when it comes to this publication.)

If I were to have two parting words (yelled through the winds) they would be thank you. This publication, and the passionate women and men who have worked on it, have been the...