I dip a tiny strip of photographic paper into a vat of developer and I watch it sink. Tapping it gently with popsicle-stick prongs, I let my mind wander for two whole minutes. I’ll stop the developing process by running it into the “stop bath” for half a minute, then into the fixer solution for three. 

Taking five minutes total, this is just one step of the extensive process of printing a black-and-white film photo by hand. Classmates gather in the darkroom, surrounded by stinky chemicals and dull, orange-red lamps, patiently trial-and-error-ing to reach as close to perfection as they can while the clock inches closer to midnight.

Printing takes patience. My friends often ask me why I’m even taking this class—six hours weekly in class and sometimes eight or ten outside of that, for a credit that doesn’t go toward my concentration or graduation requirements. If someone told me last year that my biggest commitment at school would be a photography class, I probably wouldn’t have believed them. 

Monitor hours go late into the night, starting at 7 p.m. and ending at midnight. Five hours to get as much work done as possible, and often even less—as dinner plans and meetings run late, and I can’t get to the darkroom as early as I’d like. I test one strip of a photo, then two, then three, getting teeny-tiny peeks of what the final print will look like. At each dip, I think, I could stop here, or I could just print one more. It’s only five more minutes. As I drown my strips in the developer again and again, I try to find the balance between taking too much time, straining towards perfection, and not enough, running out of patience. 

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I have always tried to live as if I am going to die tomorrow. “She lived every day as if it was her last on Earth,” I’d hear people say when they talk about those whom they truly, deeply admired, like my grandmother reflected about her mom, my dad about his late best friend. I live like I’m going to die tomorrow, but I’m afraid I’ve been interpreting that saying the wrong way. 

Minds cope with the unexpectedness of life in different ways. Maybe it’s a form of control, a way to create structure where there is none. I think I cope by trying to fit as much as possible into my life, squeezing building blocks of tasks into my brain, obsessed with trying to fill my plate, maximizing time and productivity as much as I can.

That “one more” feels familiar—not just in the darkroom, but in how I fill my days. I’ve been worrying recently that I move through life in too much of a hurry, always trying to squeeze in another task, another meeting, another moment of productivity. I crave results, outcomes, the sharp and instant relief of a finished product.

At times like these—when I have homework pressing on the backside of my mind and I’m tired, frustrated, and restless—I can’t be patient. I don’t want to develop another test strip; I never wanted to do it in the first place. I miss the immediate gratification of a digital camera, seeing the colors and light in perfect tone and depth on a tiny screen in front of me. 

Printing teaches you otherwise: You can’t rush it, can’t cheat it, can’t bend it to your will. It demands presence.

So sometimes, I will myself to relax, focus, and try my best for one good photo. It then becomes easy to understand the satisfaction and thrill of film photography. Each picture takes time, care, and effort, all visible once the photographic paper has rinsed and dried. 

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In the darkroom, no settings are ever the same—temperature and chemical ratios change day to day, preventing you from simply remembering your settings and printing the same photo the same way as before. Even when I follow all the same steps, the outcome shifts. A degree warmer, a second longer, and the image changes. No formula guarantees consistency. I’m learning to see the beauty in the process, not just the print. I always have to test, adjust, and figure out what works, trial-and-error style. 

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We all are forced to account for change from time to time, but more often than not, I’m incapable of adapting without stress and worry. Like a game of Tetris, I keep trying to reorganize my life to see how best it works—testing new arrangements, not to find balance, but to see how much I can cram into every corner.

I’m learning that this method often brings more harm than good.

Like the patience and care it takes to print one photograph and print it well, I want to bring that same intention into every part of my life. To slow down. Focus on and prioritize the people and things that matter to me. I know I’ll be happier with how I use my time if I do.

Life is unpredictable. When things change, something shifts, and my busy, carefully built schedule topples over and collapses like a line of dominoes—my mind works in weird, stressful ways to scramble and rebuild. I rush, I panic, I shut down. I try to skip steps, cut corners. 

But I’m realizing change doesn’t have to feel like a crisis; I can let myself ebb and flow with the rhythm of life, oscillating between one normal and the next. Change is good, change is natural, and change requires patience. 

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In photography class, I’m not perfect—I skip steps and give up and say point-blank that I don’t have the effort to reprint or start anew. But being in a dimly lit room with no tactile distractions like doom scrolling to keep me company, there’s a lot of room for thinking. 

Each photo is a small lesson in letting go, in slowness, in accepting unpredictability. I didn’t expect a class I took for fun to reframe how I think about living.

I want to go slower. Not because I’ll miss something if I rush, but because I’ll feel more if I don’t. I haven’t just been moving fast, but sprinting, cramming, optimizing. And when I ask myself why, I can’t come up with a good answer. 

The best last day on earth isn’t packed edge to edge with work shifts and classes, activities, meetings. It’s quiet. It’s the small buds in the cracks on the sidewalk I notice on my walk to work—a conversation with a friend I have before class begins. It’s enjoying a wait, letting my eyes linger on the way light catches dust in the air, and taking the time to write a card for a friend for no specific reason. Our minds cope with unpredictability in weird ways, but life is never what you expect, and I won’t keep forcing myself to keep up in the most perfect way possible. 

I want to focus on one photo—taking my time, never skipping a step or rushing to get someplace faster than I should. Moving slowly.

I’m trying to stop treating life like Tetris. I want to take the time to live it—strip by strip, print by print.