{"id":7750,"date":"2025-07-22T21:14:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7750"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T04:26:26","slug":"mementos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/mementos\/","title":{"rendered":"Mementos bridge gaps to home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even with nine years of sleep-away camp experience under her belt, Molly Chodos of Marlboro, New Jersey, said she couldn\u2019t help but feel \u201cnervous\u201d about the 800 miles separating her from her loved ones. To compensate, she decided to hang a photo collage of friends and family above her bed, complete with fairy lights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cA dorm can feel like a jail cell, but if you really try and decorate it with something as simple as pictures, it could make all the difference,\u201d Chodos said. \u201cIt\u2019s like (my home friends) are a piece of me while I\u2019m here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eva Berkson of Brookline, Massachusetts, also put together a photo collage. But she hung hers above her desk as motivation through late nights of writing and ACT prep.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWhenever I\u2019m working, I just look up, and it makes me feel happy,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Other cherubs, like Kai Shah of Burlingame, California, opted for stuffed animals. He said he brought along Sam, a stuffed dog he\u2019s had for 11 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHe provides a certain level of comfort and a taste of home,\u201d Shah said. \u201cHe definitely warms my heart.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like Shah, Leo Beirne of New York tossed a stuffed lion into his suitcase at the last minute. The lion \u2014 which Beirne said he\u2019s had since birth \u2014 has now become a dorm room staple for him and his roommate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cMementos can take many forms. For me, it was a stuffed animal. But it could be a picture of your home or of your family,\u201d Beirne said. \u201cBut it\u2019s definitely great to have a piece of your world back home to bring with you and to remind you where you came from.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherubs brought bits of home to Northwestern University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":8394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[469],"class_list":["post-7750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":469,"user_id":216,"is_guest":0,"slug":"gabriellafoster","display_name":"Gabriella Foster","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/35d16185aeb3e42334f33719f295633220618630c5f6627c72a42419f1f6d5f3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Foster","first_name":"Gabriella","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7750"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10185,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7750\/revisions\/10185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7750"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}