Water Bottle
While a rather mundane object, this water bottle allows a glance into one student’s journey here at the University of Arkansas. The bottle is a “pacific blue” with a white Hydroflask logo and utilizes double-walled stainless steel vacuum-insulated technology to keep drinks hot or cold (Gendler). It has a capacity of 32 oz and is a cylindrical bottle topped with a screw-on black cap with a flexible handle. There is a band of silver separating the blue bottle from the black lid. The bottle is a little worse for wear with chipped paint and many dents along the upper curve just before the lid and along the bottom edge, causing it to sit unevenly on a flat surface. The bottle is decorated with stickers from around Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas, some older and some new, featuring the logo for Old Pine Coffee Roasters, Fayetteville Public Library, and Chartwell’s Food on the Hill. Many of the stickers are faded or partially covered by newer stickers. The bottle was purchased from Amazon in the Fall of 2018 for approximately fifty dollars. It has been the primary water bottle used by one student for over three and a half years. While Hydroflasks are marketed towards outdoor, they have also taken college campuses by storm.
The water bottle serves both a practical and a symbolic purpose. Practically, it is an excellent vessel for keeping water cold on long walks to and from class, and its reusability provides a way to reduce single-use plastic waste. Symbolically, this water bottle indicates the communities that I, Nikki Gross, was a part of and my status as a student. The stickers and dents mark where I have been and my aspirations as a student at the university. Nearly every student on campus has a water bottle, and many are decorated with stickers or other decorations. Expensive water bottles have become a phenomenon across college campuses across the United States as a status symbol. Water is essential to have with you and students today are expected to use reusable water bottles (Beristain). Many, like myself, use them as artifacts of our college experience, documenting our favorite coffee shops haunts or university programs. “There are many implications to seeing water bottles being used as status symbols both positive and negative, but students seem to agree that…, ‘It’s not what you think when you see someone with a reusable water bottle but what you think see someone who doesn’t have one,’” (Beristain).
This bottle, while a mass-produced object that many students have, is particularly significant to me. As humans, we often find specific objects in our lives that we allocate value to, despite their normalness. My bottle is a physical record of my college days, which are coming to an end soon. I have carried this bottle with me from the second month of freshman year until nearly graduation. When I first arrived at the university, I was uncertain of my own identity and who I wanted to become. I did not feel like a part of the University of Arkansas community. I was grasping at anything that made me feel a part of the “in group,” and for me this water bottle was it. I did not know that it was a college necessity to have a reusable water bottle. Once I had one, it was several months before I committed to putting stickers on it. Slowly, as my filling and packing my water bottle in the side pocket of my bag became a habit, I felt like a part of the community. Everyone had a water bottle and so did I. Now, as I prepare for my next stage in life, I am grateful to allow the use of my bottle in the University Museum exhibit. The water bottle stands as a reminder that we, as students, have more in common than we may realize, even if it is just how we carry our water.
Check out a fantastic 2005 commencement speech about living a compassionate life, one of my favorites, by David Foster Wallace entitled “This is Water.”
Bibliography:
Beristain, Isabella. “Hydroflasks, Expensive Water Bottles Become College Necessity.” University Wire, Mar 20, 2019. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/wire-feeds/hydroflasks-expensive-water-bottles-become/docview/2194287422/se-2?accountid=8361.
Gendler, Samantha. “Hydroflask.” Vegetarian Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, 2018, pp. 11. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/hydroflask/docview/2058368372/se-2?accountid=8361.