You might look at the year that we have had as having been a year of loss, a year of death of different sorts be it more tangible as in the case of Carrie Fisher or the hundreds in Aleppo, or more abstract as in the things that some people think that were lost in the US elections. As humans we tend to reflect things through our own experiences and this leaves me in a strange place. You see it could be argued that I wouldn’t be in the university right now had there not been death and loss in my life.