With senior year comes excitement for the future, but that excitement rarely comes without some nostalgia from the past. As an ode to elementary school, high school seniors all over the nation are seen sporting childish backpacks featuring their favorite characters from their childhood.
“I grew up watching Disney movies,” Karina Hernandez (12) said. “[I] just wanted to, you know, hop on the trend, [because] I saw it on TikTok and it seemed funny.”
The backpacks most high schoolers wear these days have duller colors and focus more on functionality than their appearances. The transition from fun, colorful backpacks to more functional ones is indicative of the increase in workload and emphasis on seriousness in school as a student ages.
“Since it was the beginning of the year, I didn’t have too [many things] in my backpack to begin with, so I didn’t have a problem fitting my stuff in there,” Susie King (12) said. “But, when we started getting more work and I had, like, binders to put in my backpack, I just switched back to my old one.”
Although the trend isn’t always functional for the long run, it can be a fun way to add wonder and nostalgia to the end of a student’s grade school experience.
“I really hope [seniors] keep doing this in the future. It’s a really cute trend,” King said.