I am now more than halfway through my second semester here at Columbia—a full seven months since I first left my home in Berkeley, California—and somehow I still find myself pulling out my Metrocard when leaving a subway station, as if I’m still riding the BART—the Bay Area’s transit system—instead of the 1. This was far from the most obvious of my Californian tendencies...

The man waiting to place his order at the register taps his fingers on the counter to the beat of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” which is playing over the ambient din of the restaurant. He is tan and wearing a circle scarf—dad-age, but the kind of dad who knows the difference between Kobe and Wagyu beef and who has been on the receiving end of a manicure. He looks a bit like what I imagine Barbie’s boyfriend would look like at 50...