Sometimes, it's okay to dig up the past

This thought came up to me as I was going through my 6,000+ emails in my college email. I am trying to clean up all my inboxes and while in my school email I found old evaluations and grades from photo assignments. I’m talkin’ freshmen year, filled with fear and mistakes photo kid assignments. 

Reading them made me nostalgic and reminded me of how much I have changed in perspective and state of mind. When I return in the fall, it will be to complete my last year at RIT. Freshman year I was so hellbent on grades- what a harsh reality it is to see how subjective grades are in any kind of art related major. So naturally, my mind flickered back to how crushed I felt when I received a D on a photo assignment, and how elated I was when I received my first A on a photo assignment. However, seeing those grades now? They don’t mean much. What really means something 2-3 years later was the feedback (some of) my professors wrote. The praise and congratulations when I improved, the images I made successfully, as well as the suggestions and comments when I clearly didn’t cut it or execute a technique properly. 

Anyway, all of this to say it is a good thing to be able to look back and reflect. Look back and recognize any growth you have gone through. Look back and be inspired. I know I am. Am I going to do anything with this inspiration? Maybe. I don’t know. But that feeling of lightness inside, a glint of hope, that good things do happen– that feeling is what I got from looking back at those emails. So yeah, sometimes it’s okay to dig up the past. It might just give you that little bit of confirmation that you will get where you want to be.