Recently, I went through my Facebook profile and deleted every cringe worthy profile picture, tagged photo and album I could find, which left me with literally three photos. I instantly regretted this decision. I didn’t bother to save a single one out of embarrassment and sheer horror. At the time it seemed like the logical thing to do – to rid the Internet of any evidence of my painfully awkward middle school years. However, now I realize that the awkward years of adolescence are a critical part of development (and that no one uses Facebook except middle aged women and college students, so my embarrassing photos would’ve been totally safe).

For most people, the era of awkward begins when you cease to have the cute, straight-out-of-elementary-school look you’ve had since Pre-K. Around sixth grade, the braces and glasses come on, the baby fat lingers and soon acne starts showing up left and right. It isn’t until five years later that you look through your photo albums and finally come to the understanding that: wearing a shirt with ‘Aeropostale’ obnoxiously printed on the front doesn’t make you cool, twelve year olds have no business on social media, and raccoon-esque eye makeup is never cute, ever.

Looking back on these old photos, helps to learn and grow from previous mistakes. While being embarrassed is totally warranted, completely eliminating all proof that your akward phase ever happened is stupid. Those photos are precious memories of how you once were. Without reflecting on the past in all its excruciatingly awkward glory, it would be much harder to appreciate your current appearance or look forward to the future.