Take a walk around campus and you will see two common student essentials: water bottles and laptops. Students decorate their personal items with stickers, allowing them to showcase their personalities and interests.

Students paste stickers on their belongings for lots of reasons.

“My reason was because of my daughter, she’s 11,” first-year radiology student Korina Rivera said. “She put stickers everywhere on her water bottle, walls, folders and notebooks. … She likes anime. I believe it’s called Demon Slayer, so I bought her stickers. And then as I was online, I saw stuff that I liked, some skulls, so because of her I started putting stickers on my laptop.”

“It puts some fun in some of the stuff I use on a daily basis, like school being, you know, kind of boring,” second-year game art design student Saffron Ramallosa said. “I have something to catch my attention while I’m doing something.”

Business professor Stephanie Goldenberg said decorating belongings with stickers reflects students’  personalities.

“So it might be an image that they like that they’re drawn to, it might be a saying that resonates with them, it could be a brand that they enjoy, and I find that it’s a way for them to connect with others,” Goldenberg said. “People see the stickers and ask about them or maybe they have something similar and they can share in that experience.”

Goldenberg said stickers are a conversation starter.

“It’s like a common bond between individuals,” Goldenberg added. “So if you have a sticker that represents your personality or your interest or your values that someone else acknowledges, it’s almost a way for you to break the ice to be able to have that conversation with someone else.”