1. Immediately grabbing either a JanSport or Eastpak when picking out a new backpack during your back-to-school supplies shopping:
2. Making sure you picked up some Sharpies and Wite-Out pens (that really weren't for school, but actually so you could customize your backpack):
3. Also making sure you picked up a slip-front binder, 'cause it was the easiest binder to customize — all you needed was to slip in some personal photos and magazine cutouts to totally make it your own:
4. And picking up a pack of these dividers in order to ~organize~ the inside of your binder (really they just ended up being doodle pads):
5. Getting a new day planner (which you knew by week two of school you wouldn't even use):
6. And immediately filling your day planner with all your friends' addresses and phone numbers, as well as the wallet-size group photos you and your friends had taken at the portrait studio in the mall:
7. Trying to get ~cool~ notebooks:
8. And pretty notebooks — which usually ended up being too pretty and you then never wanted to use it:
9. Getting several of these bad boys from the vending machine at the mall or supermarket in order to decorate your locker, book covers, or folders:
10. Saving cutouts of your favorite celebs from magazines you collected over the summer so you that could re-create the hairstyles when it was time to go back to school:
11. And keeping magazine cutouts of step-by-step makeup tutorials, so you could re-create the looks when it was time to go back to school:
12. Also making sure you tried those makeup tutorials several times before going back to school, 'cause the magazines sometimes were a little vague and you would need to either slightly improvise or completely figure it out on your own:
13. Looking through the Delia's back-to-school catalog as soon as it came in the mail so you knew what dupes to look for while shopping at the mall and also how to style them:
I miss you, 1997.