Vikram’s Viewpoint: From Moments to Memories

By Opinion Editor Vikram Mahajan

Adjusting to new sleep schedules, confronting an ever-growing pile of homework that seems impossible to keep up with, navigating old friendship dynamics and trying to create new ones — the start of a school year is always a struggle. And that’s only been all the more true in senior year, with the knowledge that this is my last year of high school — my last year before adulthood. 

Since school started, I’ve been confronted with a duality of feelings, stressed about college applications in addition to my regular courseload — while suffering from the early stages of the dreaded affliction that is senioritis — and also experiencing the uncertain emotions that come with senior year: some strange combination of excitement and apprehension, of looking prospectively to my future and retrospectively to past memories.

The latter evokes an easy escapism. I find myself wishing I could just go back to the way things were last year, whether it be classes, friendships, or just my daily routine. Oddly, almost inconceivably, I find myself missing the junior year classes I once slogged through, even (especially?) my AP Calculus class. What fascinates me is that these were the same classes I so dreaded at the start of last year, when I found myself desperately missing the familiar comfort of my sophomore year classes and teachers.

Starting the transition from one phase of life to another, even just adjusting from one school year to the next, is a difficult and drawn-out process; that is simple tautology. But in looking at my before-and-after attitudes toward junior year and finding parallels between that experience and so many others I’ve had, I’ve realized another truth that can’t be emphasized enough: that we don’t see the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

I know for a fact that, as much as I might dislike them now, I will eventually miss my senior year classes, too. I’ll even miss the grind of college applications, and the constant chiding by the parents whose presence I took for granted, particularly once the fruit of that labor (hopefully) ripens. I know that even next semester, I’ll feel a sense of preemptive nostalgia that clouds the simultaneous eagerness for the future to come.

But that knowledge doesn’t need to cause melancholy. Perhaps it’s time to change the way I think instead. This year, it’s not just the highlights that I’ll remember — almost every moment will be a soon-to-be-treasured memory, becoming a snapshot of a past life. And, as my former-freelance-photographer mother has taught me, crucial to any good photo is having a smile on your face, in living in and enjoying that moment, rather than posing for the camera of life while sulking.

Perhaps that lesson can be applied more broadly, not only to my fellow seniors grappling with these same emotions and experiences, but also to other high school students: to live in the moment and appreciate the memory that it will at some point become — or, to modify the iconic Dr. Seuss quote, to not cry because it’s over but to smile because it’s happening.