I can recall countless times during my freshman year walking through the link after a stressful biology lab or failing another math quiz, blasting the tune of my favorite boy bands (mainly One Direction) to drown out my 14-year-old sorrows. Little did I know how difficult the next four years would be, and that contrary to popular belief, Harry Styles could not always make everything better.

Throughout high school, music has consistently been an outlet to escape my stresses. Over the past four years my music taste has evolved and changed: from boy bands to reggae and alternative, I thought high school was a rollercoaster, but looking back the real rollercoaster may have just been my music taste.

Freshman year was a big boy band year. One Direction’s 2013 Midnight Memories, and subsequent Four in 2014 were probably 80 percent of what I listened to. And this was not just my own doing; my friends were obsessed too.

In fact, don’t ask me how or why my parents allowed me to do this, but my best friend and I went to the 1D concert together at Soldier Field for their Midnight Memories tour the night of our first day of freshman year. Don’t get me started on the whole Zayn situation, to add onto all of the craziness of freshman year my favorite member abruptly exits the band?? Unbelievable.

At some point during my sophomore year, I also reconnected with a band that I grew up jamming to as a kid with my family: Coldplay. I don’t know why but listening to Chris Martin sing the anthems of my childhood brought me a bit of ease as I kept hearing the typical “Be prepared to get three hours less sleep a night because of APUSH.”

I probably should’ve listened to the advice of those around me more at the time, but in the moment the lyrics of “Yellow”, “Clocks” and “Fix You” reassured me that junior year would be okay and that despite how hard everyone says it is, I would be fine.

As I look at my playlists from junior year, Hamilton was a top album. I recall countless nights (or should I say mornings) cramming for a history quiz with the vocals of Lin-Manuel Miranda helping me remember who was “In the room where it happened”, or the characteristics of Jeffersonian anti-federalists.

Music has the power to bring back specific memories about a  period of time in our lives. Whenever I hear Outkast’s “Roses,” I’ll always remember the acoustics of the fieldhouse and hearing that song weekly in my sophomore year P.E. class as we ran laps. Whenever I hear Harry Styles’s angelic voice in “Sign of the Times”, I’ll remember how I felt as I blasted it in my car as I left school after taking my first AP test at the end of my junior year.

So seniors, if you’re starting to feel like ‘Oh my god how is it possible we are graduating in eight days, I’m actually a freshman,” look back at some of your old songs and you’ll be reminded of the little things you may have forgotten throughout high school. And who knows, maybe you’ll  reconnect with your favorite tunes from 2014!