Northwestern Students Stick to Expressing Themselves
Graphic via Angela Cheng
College is a common time for students to figure out who they are, their identities and how they want to express themselves. Many students choose to showcase who they are in different ways, such as the clothing they wear, the extracurricular activities they join or the content they decide to post on social media. There is one other way that students choose to express themselves that is simple yet very effective: personalized stickers on their laptops.
In my high school, we were required to have laptops for all of our courses. Because of this, many of my high school peers, including myself, showered our laptops with fun stickers that represented what we liked and who we were. As years went on and I got new laptop covers, however, I haven’t had the time to invest in covering my laptop. But, if I were to do it, the stickers I would choose would be very different than the stickers I had on my laptop when I was 16.
Unlike me, many students on campus cover their laptops in order to show the world a little bit about themselves.
“I like the idea of customizing the look of my laptop, an object that travels with me everywhere. It just seemed right that something that important to your life also reflected your style and personality,” said graduate student Olivia Korhonen.
Korhonen has 16 stickers on her laptop, creating a collage that represents who she is. Her favorite stickers are her RGB “Speak the truth” sticker, ACME Radio and #doingthings. She really resonates with these stickers and feels like they portray the personality she wants to project to the world.
Korhonen also buys stickers in locations that she’s had amazing memories in. Her ACME Radio sticker represents a trip she had in Nashville with her best friends.
Photo by Olivia Korhonen
Like Korhonen, second-year student Maya Mojica believes that stickers are a great way to showcase who you are as a person.
“I feel like it’s [stickers] a good way to find out about the things that are important to a person. I think that learning about people through the little details of their life is a really interesting way to get to know them,” says Mojica.
Mojica started putting stickers on her laptop during her first year at Northwestern. She says she was enlightened to be unique and start “building her brand.” She chuckled at this thought because she remembers realizing that so many students at Northwestern decorate their laptops with stickers – she was not the one to come up with the idea to express herself through computer decorating.
After living in New York this summer, Mojica bought her favorite sticker – her “Strand sticker.” The “I heart Strand” sticker, which is from a bookstore in New York, has a special place in her heart because she spent a lot of hours in that store and has many significant memories there.
Mojica picks out her stickers spontaneously – whenever something catches her eye. She loves being able to connect a little bit of herself with a physical object that other people can look at.
Photo by Nia Harris
Like Korhonen and Mojica, third-year student Madeline Gaines put together a series of stickers on her laptop after noticing stickers on other people’s laptops, wanting others to know a little bit about who she is.
Gaines is proud of her Hispanic heritage and represents her background through her favorite sticker – one that she got at a Mexican Heritage museum. This sticker is of a Día De Los Muertos skull with the writing “No Te Rajes,” which means “Never Give Up” in Spanish.
Along with her “No Te Rajes” sticker, Gaines resonates deeply with her “Parkland Strong” sticker because her best friend went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and experienced the Parkland shooting. Gaines has “a strong emotional connection” to the event.
Photo by Maddie Gaines
Overall, Northwestern students are diverse, well-rounded, passionate and interested in many different aspects of life. A lot of students have things in common, such as decorating their laptops in order to give the people around them a little sense of who they are. These stickers vary from being aesthetically pleasing, humorous and memorable, to having strong emotional ties.
No matter what, there is always a way to express who you are. Whether that be decorating your laptop with colorful stickers, drawing on a pair of jeans you love or posting your thoughts and ideas to social media. There’s no right or wrong way to show the world who you are.