I’m not sure when it happened, but I know it did. One day, during my freshman year Introduction to Sociology class, I sat surrounded by a sea of laptop cases covered in stickers, glitter, and personality.
But just yesterday, in my upper-division Sociological Methods course, I looked around and realized something had changed. The sparkles were gone. The stickers were gone. What replaced them were simple, minimalist cases—some clear, others blank altogether.
It wasn’t a gradual shift I noticed over time; it seemed to happen all at once. One moment, our laptops were colorful reflections of who we were. The next, they were understated, almost professional.
Maybe that’s because the era of life I’m in is strange. Everything is changing so quickly that I rarely notice it until it’s already happened. It feels like I just graduated high school, yet somehow I’m now preparing for law school interviews and wrapping up my final year of college. To be fair, I am graduating a year early, but the principle stands.
Life has sped up, and I only catch glimpses of the changes in passing, like noticing the quiet transformation of laptop cases in a classroom.
That small realization made me notice other things, too. My perspective has changed. I’m growing up, though not in any dramatic way. It’s subtle, the kind of growing up that happens in the spaces between sideline performances and final exams.
The clothes that were trendy my freshman year are long gone, donated or thrown to the back of my closet, never to be found again. I no longer remember the exact paths I took from my freshman dorm to class every day. Even the voices of friends who have transferred or moved away are beginning to fade from my memory.
It’s easy not to notice because college keeps you so focused on the next paper, the next internship, the next thing. Maybe that’s why nostalgia can feel dangerous, like an indulgence we can’t afford. There’s this idea that lingering on the past means losing momentum. And sometimes that’s true. But not always.
Sometimes, I think it’s necessary to dwell on the past a little. To pause and look inward. To remember who you were and how you became who you are. Because when you slow down enough to notice the changes, like the laptop cases, you also notice the growth that caused them.
Our laptops, oddly enough, might be the perfect metaphor for this. As college students, our laptops are the center of our academic universe. They contain our essays, our calendars, and our search histories that track everything from “how to make a cover letter” to “why am I so tired all the time.” They are, in a way, an external reflection of us.
So it makes sense that the way we decorate (or don’t decorate) our laptops says something about how we see ourselves and how we want to be perceived.
When we first come to college, we arrive as extensions of our hometowns. We carry our memories and identities in tangible ways, from stickers of our high school mascots to quotes from shows we once binged.
Those stickers become small pieces of home, reminders of the friends we used to see every day or the versions of ourselves that existed before we started over.
But somewhere along the way, things shift. The stickers start to peel, and we never quite replace them. Maybe it’s because we’re too busy, or maybe it’s because we don’t feel the same need to declare who we are on the outside anymore.
Minimalism, in that sense, feels symbolic. The blank laptop case isn’t just about aesthetics; it reflects the desire for control in a life that’s increasingly complicated.
It’s the same reason we start color-coding Google Calendars or switching from messy dorm rooms to neatly decorated apartments. It’s not that we’ve lost personality, it’s that we’ve learned to contain it differently.
Sometimes I miss the chaotic sticker phase. It represented a kind of unapologetic self-expression. Now, our expressions are quieter. They show up in the essays we write, the jobs we pursue, and the passions we chase. Maturity doesn’t erase who we were, but it does refine how we show it.
When I think about my own laptop, I realize it’s a timeline of my growth. There used to be a sticker that said “Good vibes only,” a phrase that now makes me cringe a little, though I fondly remember my “VSCO girl” phase and the love I had for that sticker.
There was also a sticker of my favorite meme, a reminder of a time when my identity was defined by the seemingly endless vines I quoted. Those stickers are gone now, but in their absence is something equally meaningful: space for what’s next.
I’ve realized that growing up isn’t a single moment of transformation; it’s a collection of quiet realizations. It’s noticing that your laptop case is plain now, but feeling okay about it.
It’s realizing that the version of yourself who loved stickers would be proud of how far you’ve come, even if you look a little different now.