Breathe

Sunday, October 22, 2017 marks the day of my senior pictures. As a member of the graduating class of 2018, I indulged in the tradition of capturing the peak of my years in high school with a typical photo-shoot which took a majority of my afternoon. If some of you are like me, you may question the need for an extensive amount of time, money, and preparation for an album that will serve you for about a year, maybe two, before it is filed away until a later date where you might find yourself reminiscing on the floor of your new apartment while eating ice cream straight out of the carton with a wooden cooking spoon because you’re and adult and can do that now. For others, my mother included, the task of senior pictures creates a certain level of finality. By this I simply mean that our parents started capturing moments of our lives with outrageously embarrassing photos of us as naked toddlers and now they get to flaunt how well their children grew up and can finally dress themselves and not have to undergo the sometimes ridiculous event of bath-time with uncontrollable kids. 

Despite my slight dislike of photo-shoots, I found myself enjoying moments of my senior picture session. My photographer, a close family friend, asked me questions about my life that even I hadn’t thought about yet. As a senior, the questions about the next step in our lives seem endless. Where are you going to college? What are you majoring in? How many scholarships have you applied for? Are you going to move back home when you graduate? Most of the time, I find that I answer these questions with “probably’s,” “maybe’s,” and “that’s the plan anyway.” The fact simple fact: I don’t know. Yes I have applied for college, yes I am applying for scholarships, yes I have a major, but all of these things could change in an instant. Much like the college classes I am taking now, due dates could be changed at a moment’s notice, plans might have to be rethought, and our futures ever changing.

 Recently celebrating turning 18, yet another “senior perk”, the only gift I asked for was an Apple watch. Some of you might groan and ask the relevance of this gift (which I questioned after Apple released the new technology). However, the watch had a surprising feature that I have come to love and rely on. Every night, without fail, the watch dings and buzzes on my arm with a simple reminder: Breathe. This notification takes me through steps of releasing the stresses of the day, week, or month and allows me to focus on the more important aspects of life instead of stressing out on yet another college assignment that randomly popped up on the assignment list. If we all could just keep this little reminder in the back of our heads during the day, we might just find ourselves being a little less stressed and living a (semi) picture perfect life. 

Still breathing,

Scuyler Zenger

NCD President