In 2016 I decided I was going to take one video every day for an entire year.

The idea started after a friend had shown me the video montage that she had created from her year before. It was my senior year of high school going into my freshman year of college, so what a better way to honor and remember 2016.

It was not easy at first and I missed a fair amount of days just because I was not doing anything interesting or it completely slipped my mind to film. But eventually, I got the hang of it and I was using videos from what I took on snapchat or asking friends to send videos of us from that day.

Soon the year was over and I pieced together all the clips to show my year in a five minute video.

This is what I learned:

How much can change in a year. I went from a senior in high school to a second semester freshman in a span of 5 minutes. I got to see how much my life transformed just within 366 days. The people who were in my videos changed, as I lost and gained friendships and who I decided to spend my time with. I saw what I valued evolve based on what I filmed or did not film.

I could relive moments of my life. Rewatching some of the videos I realized how unreliable the human memory is. Some events in my life I thought that I would never forgot completely slipped my mind until watching the videos. But when I was watching them, I felt as though I was reliving the year and certain clips brought back emotions I had in those moments both good and bad. It left me nostalgic. I also was able to share the video montage with my friends who were in it and we could relive some moments together.

I could watch myself grow. I could see my year of growth in five minutes. I was a very different person in the beginning of 2016 compared to to the end of the year. The videos I took were important things to me at the time and I got to see what I valued, but I also got to witness myself changing and becoming the person I am today.

I will always have this. I'm always going to have these videos. It's like a photo album of my year that is extremely accessible. Especially in this digital generation we keep our memories on our phones or computers, so making a montage video was just an extra step to put everything from that year in one place.

Ever since creating my video, I have highly encouraged people to do the same because it is a great way to remember your year, but also a great way to see yourself grow and see how much you change in year.

Here's the link to my 2016 year video if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJfRBuuqjfY