I have over 115,000 photos on my phone.
Most people, especially Mr. “manage storage” from my phone settings, tell me to delete some of them, but I can’t.
A screenshot of an old event flyer can go, but most of my shots represent moments I want to hold in my hand forever.
They include my first week on campus, where I took photos of buildings as if I were a tourist from Mars seeing concrete for the first time. Reporting ventures, from protests to sidelines. My beloved Shake Smart bowls next to a view of the lake. Walks back from The Daily, often taken while chatting with fellow North Campus staffers. My cat when he used to fit in my hand. Baby bunnies on campus.
I never thought I would be making those kinds of memories outside of my hometown or Evanston.
Yet somehow, my camera roll became filled with photos from multiple cities and more airports than I could count. From four quarters abroad, Medill on the Hill, two international Medill JOURneys, a domestic class reporting trip and an outside reporting trip abroad.
When I studied abroad, I found myself running quite a lot. Intentionally in the mornings when possible, but also when going from museum to museum before closing time, or catching the last train late at night. I would pretend I was on The Amazing Race, rotating between loved ones I imagined next to me as my teammates mid-run.
If there was an exhibit, I wanted to see it. If there was a distant neighborhood, I wanted to walk through it. If there was a specialty dish, odds were that it was already in my camera roll.
My camera roll became flooded with breathtaking sights, yes, but also photos of simple streets that reminded me of other places and brought me new memories.
I will be very lucky if I can revisit the cities where I dropped my phone, got lost, or got food poisoning and laughed about it. Even luckier if I can go with the loved ones who got to know the cities through my photos. I’m lucky I’ll always have them in the palm of my hand.
I imagined Phil Keoghan, host of The Amazing Race, announcing the legs of the race now that my undergraduate travels are done: “Greece, Colombia, Italy, Japan, Washington, China, Argentina, Iowa and Poland.”
After four years of detours and roadblocks, this race around the world has finally reached its finish line. But wait — there’s Northwestern.
I walked out of my last lecture without realizing it was my last one. I didn’t take a photo.
One professor told me he still remembered what the air around him felt like after his last class. I had nothing but the crinkly Peanut M&Ms wrapper in my hand and a photo of goslings by the lake from before I fully made the realization.
I thought I still had one more lecture, but maybe that’s why I spent four years taking so many photos: Because you never know when you’re living the end of a chapter until after it’s become a speck in your phone gallery.
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