Andy Tybout

If you feel an urge to express yourself but don’t want to spend a whole hour… Andy Tybout

If you feel an urge to express yourself but don’t want to spend a whole hour writing an essay or painting, fear not: there’s still the dorm room.

Even in dorm rooms that are barely larger (and less smelly) than a prison cell, a student’s decorations — particularly his posters — say a lot about him. Rage Against the Machine and Noam Chomsky? The kid’s a rebel. Bob Marley and The Notorious B.I.G.? Make sure to disable the smoke detectors. I’m here to ensure your personality doesn’t get lost in translation.

We’ll start with music. As a college student, you want your music posters to say: I’m cultured, but down-to-earth. The “cultured” part means striking a balance between quality and obscurity — achieving a harmony between well-known, well-respected artists and artists so obscure even their own mothers haven’t heard of them. For example, the cultured college student may hang a poster of some unknown indie band (if they make posters) alongside a poster of Radiohead. Conversely, the down-to-earth part means assuaging people’s snob radar with something everyone loves — Bruce Springsteen, say, or The Lonely Island.

Free things are also a plus. Whenever someone gives you a poster without demanding some sort of currency, take it and hang it up — miracles like this are few and far between. For freshman year, I had three posters on my wall: two “Observe and Report” posters and a Flyers poster. I don’t particularly love either of those things — the movie was sporadically humorous, and I’ve never been a fan of Philadelphia sports. But they were giving out free “Observe and Report” posters at the screening last year, and one of my roommates had found the Flyers poster lying on the street, just waiting to be picked up. How could I say no?

There’s also an online outlet for frugal poster-lovers. It’s called The Rasterbator. At the time this column was written, the online version was down, but the downloadable version of the program was still working. All you have to do is upload an image, select how many sheets of paper you want the image expanded to, and then hit print. Your picture will now be spread across multiple pages, ready to be taped together and hung. Just don’t back up the computer labs with your 100 by 100 panorama of “Twilight’s” Edward Cullen.

Posters are all well and good, but sometimes students want to go the extra mile and turn their dorm room into a Big Lots. This often involves flags, stolen traffic cones and life-size cardboard cutouts. Trust me, this is not wise.

Cardboard cutouts may hold a certain novelty — especially if they’re of vintage action heroes like Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris — but nobody wants to wake up at three in the morning to find Bruce Lee’s fierce eyes boring into their soul. And it’s only a matter of time before an officer of the law wanders through your hallway to discover the missing traffic cone whose absence caused a pileup on Forbes. Plus, all that random crap just makes your room look like the interior of a Red Robin restaurant.

Another decoration I’d steer clear of is the “hot girls” posters. Granted, they’re nice companions during long essay sessions, but studies show they’re no help in attracting the real thing. In fact, it may be an inverse relationship — the more nude women adorning your walls, the less likely that scenario is to replicate itself in reality.

I could give more suggestions, but if you just followed my advice you would commit one of the deadly sins of dorm rooms: unoriginality. So I’m going to let you go, with the trust that when you walk into your new room, you’ll take your cues from me, rather than your grandpa.

And for God’s sake, no inspirational posters.