There’s something uniquely powerful about photos. At first glance, they seem to capture only moments—smiles, laughter, the spark of excitement as we stand in front of something new. But when I look back at the pictures from my first year at Syracuse University, I’m not just reminded of those smiles; I’m taken back to the emotions, to the moments that would follow them, and to everything I was about to experience.
Syracuse University
My dog, Monson, and I after move-in
I was so full of hope when I arrived on campus in August of 2023. The thought of Syracuse becoming a second home, a place where I would thrive and make lifelong friends, filled me with so much joy. But as I look at the photos now, I can’t help but feel a wave of sadness and pain for the girl in those pictures. She had no idea what was coming. No idea that the friendships she was about to form would turn into toxic situations, or that the joy of college life would quickly be overshadowed by a living environment that made me feel unsafe and unwanted.
My roommate and her friends made my first few months a living nightmare, bullying me in ways that were subtle but constant, leaving me anxious and out of place. It wasn’t just the academic stress; it was the feeling of being trapped in a hostile environment, one where I felt like I couldn’t thrive. And just when I thought I might find some peace, my world shifted again. During Thanksgiving break, my parents announced that they were getting a divorce, a blow that shattered whatever sense of stability I had left.
Looking at the pictures from that time, I’m struck by the contrast between the person I was in those photos and the person I was about to become. In those smiles, I see a version of myself that is unaware of the deep emotional turmoil I was about to endure. It’s like the photos freeze me in time, capturing the innocence of a girl who was about to face so much more than she could have imagined.
This experience, this disconnect between what’s captured in the photos and the truth of the moment, reminds me of something I read in Reading Autobiography Now—the idea of collective remembering and how technologies like writing and photography shape not only our memories, but the selves those memories construct. According to Smith and Watson, these technologies help preserve our memories, but they also influence how we shape them. When I look at my photos from Syracuse, I realize that while they freeze a version of me in time, they don’t tell the whole story. They don’t show the quiet pain behind the smile, the moments of isolation that didn’t make it into the frame.
Taking a Peloton class at Barnes Center at The Arch at Syracuse University
“… but in the sense that the technologies, as aids to preserving and passing on memories, shape the memories conveyed and the selves those memories construct” (Smith and Watson 44).
In their section on Memory and Trauma, Smith and Watson discuss how narrating traumatic memories can be a therapeutic act, helping us to process and heal. For me, it wasn’t writing that became my refuge—it was exercise. It was my way of escaping into something I could control when everything else felt out of my hands. Like Safiya in How to Say Babylon, who describes writing as feeling like oxygen, I found solace in physical activity. It gave me a sense of release and control, a way to channel the anxiety and pain I was carrying into something tangible. Exercise became my lifeline—my way of reasserting control over a life that felt chaotic and uncertain.
“That I had been writing, and it felt like oxygen. That nothing at all on this earth filled me with more purpose than a poem” (Sinclair 199).
I couldn’t have known it at the time, but those experiences at Syracuse, and the way I navigated them through writing, helped shape who I am today. In the words of Sinclair, “A book, I soon learned, was time travel. Each page held irrefutable power.” Just as books have the power to take us back in time, so do photographs. They’re like portals that allow us to revisit moments, but they also have the power to evoke feelings we may not have been ready to face at the time.
I think back to my first year at Syracuse, when I threw myself into my studies to escape from everything else. It was the one area of my life where I could measure success, where I could control the outcome. But the deeper I get into reflecting on that year, the more I realize how much I was running away from—avoiding not just the challenges of college life, but the even bigger challenges at home. In that sense, my academic achievements, like the photos I look back on now, were a way to mask the pain I was carrying.
“Academic excellance, they always told us, was a way to escape a run-down life” (Sinclair 57).
Now, as I look back at the girl in those pictures, I see her differently. I see the resilience she didn’t know she had, the strength she would find even when the world around her seemed impossible to navigate. But I also see the trauma she was about to experience—the version of myself who was staring out into the unknown, unsure of what was ahead.
In the present, looking at those photos, I feel a mix of emotions. I feel sadness for the pain she was about to experience, but I also feel gratitude for the journey that shaped me into who I am today. The photos, the memories, they remind me of everything I’ve been through. They show me who I was, who I became, and who I continue to grow into. And while they may capture a smiling face, they also hold the power to evoke the complexity of the moments that came before, and the strength that emerged in the aftermath.
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