Category: Student Posts

Macbook/Laptop

Water Bottle: Stay Hydrated

Vaseline and LipGloss: I can’t be walking around campus with dry lips…

Notebooks: Which I barely use to take notes anymore.

Airpods: Need my daily dose of Frank Ocean , The Weeknd, and Drake

Pencil Pouch

Keys/pepper spray: Just incase lol

This self portrait describes my current life at Emory and how I’ve learned about myself as a college student. Items such as the notebook that I bring around for fun and serves no purpose because I recently discovered that I like taking digital notes. This assignment was challenging because I couldn’t use simple items like keys or a pencil pouch to portray my personality. However, I believe this is a sort of writing because it can convey the most significant items to a college freshman or student.

Contents:

Asus Q530 laptop: love this laptops- a recent purchase at Emory after my former Lenovo laptop has an obsession with bluescreening.

Airpods: best small device made in my opinion. NC is top notch and the adjustable ear tips are essential for me

Calculator: have used this calculator since middle school and has brought lots of 100s and good luck

Pencil Case: a nostalgic item- haven’t used or seen in since I was in grade 2. Carries pens and pencils although I really only use 1 pencil and once pen from it.

Notebooks: I’m a paper kind of person. Computer note taking was never my thing.

Wallet: present for my 18th birthday. Very sleek and slim

Water bottle: not much to it; a classic design and dispenses water out at a high rate

Hand Cream: Emory soap is very drying for my hands…

Keys + lanyard: love swinging this apparatus around and don’t really like carrying it in my pockets because I’m afraid of scratching my wallet or phone case

Hat: still has yet to be used.

This exercise was very enjoyable for me. I believe I have less items in my bag than most people, but each item I am very connected with. Writing this blog made me realize I could write like a whole paragraph on each item. Each one has a lot of meaning to me, since I was the one who usually picked it out after careful decision. I was raised to not want to new things and even though I love new things, the things I have still have a lot of meaning to me.

Unlike my desk, my bag is (mostly) free of clutter. Despite my hardest efforts, I always find myself living in a messy environment: a quick comparison between my roommates side of the room and mine will undoubtedly prove this. However, the one thing I try to always keep organized is my bag. I try to bring as little as possible wherever I go outside, not only because it causes substantially less strain carrying it around campus, but also because it makes me feel more organized than I really am.

As a member of the Barkley Forum debate team, I got a tote bag that has quickly become my go-to everyday carry bag. Inside my bag on any given day, you’re likely to find my laptop and/or iPad (depending on whether I remembered to charge them), my microfiber cloth (I bought it from this hole-in-the-wall stationary store in Taipei, but I swear it does wonders whenever I need to clean my glasses or phone screen), water bottle (probably empty), headphones (it’s either on full charge or out of battery), and other miscellaneous goods such as a tub of chewing gum, 27¢ in coins, my Korean quiz (which I accidentally scrunched up), and an empty Oscillo tube.

I found it quite interesting to see what was in my bag, despite carrying it around campus almost every day. It was interesting seeing all the items laid out, and I was somewhat surprised by how little I take with me.

• Backpack: the bag I have been using since 9^th grade, which is 4 years old now
• LinaBell: a doll pendant given by my best friend in China
• Coca Cola Polar Bear: a doll pendant that I bought in Coca Cola World
• MacBook Pro
• Notebook, pen and pencil: to do some hard copy homework
• iPad: to make notes
• AirPods: for music on the way to class
• Chargers
• Eye Drop: to relieve my dry eye syndrome
• Water: two small bottles a day
• Vitamin C：supplementation of daily vitamins

I have been using this backpack for four years and have never replaced it during the school. It has a large capacity and holds a lot of memories of my high school life. The most challenging part of this assignment lies in expressing my personality or habits with some simple daily or school objects in my bag. In fact, this image is somehow representative of my personality because I value my friends and those wonderful memories a lot. In addition, I prefer to take e-notes and love to listen to music in my spared time. Therefore, I do consider that representing myself in a catalog of the stuff in my bag is a type of writing because it encourage us to use some simple items to convey our ideas and thoughts.

The contents of my bag: computer, pencil and pen, wallet, airpods, chapstick, calculator, water bottle, folder, books, notebooks, my lanyard, umbrella, and a daily planner. The majority of these items I carry around with me whenever I take my backpack; if it isn’t raining I won’t take an umbrella, and if I’m not going to our english class, I usually won’t bring the book we’re reading. I enjoyed this assignment because it was quite straight forward and was satisfying arranging my belongings to fit together. I think the image is an accurate representation of myself since I decided to include just the materials I genuinely carry around. I’ve used the same backpack since my sophomore year of high school and I’ve always made sure to bring my wallet, airpods, and chapstick no matter where I go. While I don’t think I’d go so far as to say this image is a form of writing, I certainly agree that it is a medium that’s an effective way to express myself.

Personally, I enjoyed creating the Quadriptych more than I did the Triptych. I think the biggest reason for this was because I had more space, therefore providing me with more freedom to craft a full story.

I found my inspiration for this comic while I was eating lunch in the DCT. I noticed that the majority of students were eating one of two things: salad and pizza. I love both of these foods for different reasons, and I thought it would be funny to showcase a “pick me” war between a salad and a pizza (my guess is the pizza would win, as I feel like it is generally a more popular food option).

Because the Quadriptych was a panel longer, I had the opportunity to use a technique I’ve seen throughout Stitches: reader expectation. Of course, this comic doesn’t have a page turn, but the audience is still forced to wait with the salad for the end result of the comic, which unfortunately doesn’t turn out in the salad’s favor. I think it’s amusing for the reader to be in suspense alongside a literal bowl of salad over a situation that is quite silly when you think about the story as a whole. I guess you could call this comic a “food fight”? (I’m sorry, I had to put another pun in there!)

This assignment allowed me to show more creative freedom in both my drawing/artistic skills and my methods of storytelling/creative writing.

The things I carry in my bag are fairly simple and understandable for any college student. A MacBook Air, notebooks, sunglasses, folders, loose-leaf paper, pens, pencils, a calculator, and a water bottle. I only carry a few items because I like to travel light, and I do not enjoy carrying around extra material and items that have no use because this will make walking around campus that much more of a pain. The two odd items I have is an Aleve bottle because I believe you never know when you will get hurt or have a migraine in class, so having Aleve to the rescue is a must. In addition, I also carry a paper calendar/agenda planner with me because I like physically writing my to-do list. Most of my peers in this generation use an electronic calendar platform like Egenda or Google Calendar. However, I find satisfaction in writing down everything I want to accomplish for the day and crossing them out as I go through the tasks. 

• Folders
  • I have enough papers already, I’ll try and organize them in here.
• iPad
  • Used for homework, games, doodling, etc.
• Headphones
  • For the times when I feel like shutting the rest of the world out.
• Books
  • I put the books for this class at the top…for obvious reasons!
• Daily Planner
  • My mom made me take this with me…should I tell her I’m actually using it?
• Self-Care Items
  • As a student, it is important that I maintain a balance between studying and self-care; this includes protecting myself from the sun rays of Georgia.
• Charger
  • For instances when one of my (many) devices is low on battery.
• Pencil Case
  • I have too many school supplies…I might as well keep them in the same place.

I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. It serves as a great way to learn about my classmates through their posts and share some things about myself in the process. I tend to be a very organized person, so setting up the materials wasn’t super hard for me. I decided to omit the backpack from the image because like the rug I took the picture on, the backpack is also gray, and I didn’t want that to become confusing to the viewer(s).

This image is representative of me as a person because it shows the balance between my academic life (as seen by all the school supplies) and my personal/social life (represented by the self-care items). I hope people are able to recognize from this image how both of these aspects are important to me and allow me to live my life to the fullest.

To answer the final question in this prompt, I do believe that representing myself through the things in my bag is a type of writing. While unconventional, it still communicates an idea to the reader/viewer and encourages them to think about what they have just seen in order to gain a deeper understanding of the work itself and/or the person behind the work. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, and I hope people have learned more about me through this assignment!