I have always been the annoying friend who insists on taking pictures. I take candid shots, set up “photoshoots,” and insist my friends and I get a squad pic every time we go somewhere cool. What can I say? I like being the mom.

All my photographing has left me with a large collection of photographs of my life. I love organizing albums by season or event and taking a peek whenever I feel the need to reminisce.

Technology is cool in giving us the ability to click from one thing to another, though putting off French homework to browse through my seventh-grade album on Google Photos is probably a bad idea.

What technology cannot do, however, is provide that wonderful feeling of flipping pages of a scrapbook, fingering the edges of a concert ticket long-ago used, and remembering what you felt on a night that you hope to never forget.

The therapeutic process of putting the scrapbook together is fun, too, for you get to organize the photos and let your creative juices flow.

I am by no means a “good scrapbooker,” assuming that’s a thing. No, I can’t seem to master the perfect photo layout, and I have no idea how to integrate stickers and add-ons seamlessly. I use washi tape to bind my photos instead of glue, too, which leads to bulky pages and overflowing scrapbooks. It doesn’t matter, though, because I love seeing my messy handiwork once it’s finished.

I love going through printed photographs (that’s another thing that doesn’t happen enough, by the way, printing photos) and organizing them by date, spending a few seconds to study the faces of those in the pictures to remember how much fun we were having. I love making these albums with friends, too, because we can laugh at the silly faces together and, years later, I can remember the fun I had putting the scrapbook together, too.

So, if you think that you need a stress reliever this semester and have some time on your hands, consider scrapbooking. It doesn’t matter how the finished product turns out because the process is the fun part.