My biggest fear is forgetting. I hate to think that, someday, I won\u2019t be able to recall the faces of my fellow cherubs, what my dorm room looked like or the calming sight of sailboats at sunset. That\u2019s why, as a cherub, I carried a camera almost everywhere I went.<\/p>\n
Weighing two-and-a-half pounds and costing nearly $1,000, the Canon EOS 80D was not a burden to take lightly. My shoulders ached from carrying it around all day along with my heavy backpack. On cloudy days, I scanned the sky, ready to sprint for cover at the sight of a single raindrop. But, it was worth it.<\/p>\n
Every day, I snapped away. Photos of hardworking cherubs typing away in the classroom, sweaty-faced cherubs hiding under the shade of their umbrellas, sleepy cherubs dozing in dorm common areas \u2014 my camera captured them all.<\/p>\n
At night, I edited. I deleted blurry photos, cropped the poorly framed ones, and lightened those taken in the dimly-lit lecture halls. Lying on my bed, I\u2019d stay up late, reliving memories from the day through the pixels on my computer screen.<\/p>\n
The final step of this process, sharing the photos, helped me break the ice with many cherubs. All I had to say was, \u201cHey, what\u2019s your phone number? I have a cool photo of you,\u201d and our conversations would flow.<\/p>\n
Thanks to my camera, I brought home a hard drive full of memories. But, more importantly, I created an album full of lifelong friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I never want to forget. That\u2019s why, as a cherub, I carried around a camera almost everywhere I went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":1759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[153],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":153,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"cap-adong","display_name":"Ashley Dong","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2149,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/2149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2023\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}