As cliche as it is, photographs are memories that are frozen in time. They allow us to remember the good times we had with the people we love. I have a ton of photos on my desk that remind me of all the people I miss when I am at school. To another person, these photos are all posed and look very insignificant. To me, the photos all conjure up a detailed memory.

This is what my desk looks like. As you can see, there are about 14 photographs on my desk. I'll sometimes rotate out photos if I am missing a particular person more or if I am missing someone who isn't already featured on my desk.

This is basically what I look at every day when I am studying, not in a creepy way, though. At first, I did not know what to do with this space in front of me since I could not think of anything that I would want to look at all the time. After the first week or so of freshman year, I realized that I should put pictures of the friends from home that I miss. I mostly keep college people off of my desk except for in that tiny little Polaroid in the corner. On the other hand, at home, I have pictures of them put up around the room and most of my high school friends are kept off of these walls. To anyone else, these photos look like typical pictures of a girl standing next to her friends and family. For me, they all hold unforgettable memories that had I not taken a photo of, I might have forgotten ever happened.

This is a photo of the first time I met two of my oldest and closest friends. I vaguely remember meeting them, but I forgot about this day until my friend showed me the photo. The photo next to it is just a photo my sister and I took in the foyer of my house during a storm because we got really bored. But never would have remembered I did that without the photo to conjure up the memory.

There may be times when you think that whatever you are doing at the moment does not merit a photo. But if you're with friends or family, just take a picture. You might actually look back and wish that you took a photo that day with those people. One of my biggest regrets is not taking photos during last Thanksgiving. It was the last time I saw my godfather but of course I could not have known that at the time. I wish I took the time to take even a few photos of everyone that was there that day. I don't even care if I'm not in any of the photos, I just wished I had some photos of my godfather from the last time I got to see him. In addition, sometimes it's the days that are the most uneventful, the ones when you are just going on a walk with friends or just hanging out in your dorm room that you want to look back on in the future, reminiscing about the good ol' days when you had time to relax.