Imagine this: Michael B. snaps pictures of you sitting perfectly still, holding a million-dollar smile with your shiny collarbones, posing for the most important picture you will ever take. Your mom continuously yells at you to stop slouching and blinking so much. Welcome to senior year.

Meticulously curled hair, the perfect tan, glowing skin, and flawless makeup are all crucial components to the recipe for the perfect senior portrait.

But how did you get there?

Let me break it down for you.

You get the long-awaited email from Mrs. Huerta practically begging you to call Reinbold Michael B. Photography before the summer ends. Perfect. You made your appointment. Now it’s time to procrastinate the prep for senior pics the night before.

By now, you should probably have the ideal tan; after all, you are in the middle of summer. But preferring to be a tad more bronzed, you apply St. Tropez tanning lotion the night before. This night is vital to getting that year round glow your senior picture will suggest is the your-round you.

Next up: skin. You lather your thick charcoal acne mask all over your face, praying that the huge pimple sitting in between your eyebrows will magically disappear by morning. Then you do your fifteen-step skincare routine only designated for big events, such as picture day. Any other day, you’re lucky enough to splash your face with water once. But this isn’t like any other day.

It’s around 2:47 a.m. in the morning. After taking a much-needed three-hour break to eat dinner and scroll endlessly through TikTok, beauty rest seems to be the next priority. Now, my friends, we are halfway there to a spectacular senior year picture.

After about two and a half hours of deep sleep, you wake up, finding your face the puffiest it has ever been with that zit growing ten times bigger.

Typical. However, the show must go on.

Next off the list is the hair. Weeks in advance, you have probably decided if you were going to either curl or straighten your luscious locks. You picked curls, but then the bigger question becomes tight ringlet curls or wavy curls? You choose wavy curls because your mom said you would look older and more sophisticated if your hair did not look like Shirley Temple’s.

Hair = check.

Last order of business is the makeup. After practicing the makeup look the night before, making sure that you wouldn’t look like an absolute clown, you soon realize that you have to replicate the flawless Hailey Bieber look right now. Take a deep breath to calm your nerves and relax your shaky hands. Makeup artists don’t have shaky hands.

Thirty-five minutes go by, and at this point, you realize you’ve done the best you can in all physical aspects. All you can do now is hope that the lighting does you justice.