Perhaps yours is full to the brim, filled with countless memorabilia from your time in Raffles Hall? Or perhaps, yours is devastatingly empty—you never bought any pins to use on them.
Regardless of what block you stay in, the Raffles Hall corkboard is always one of the first things you see when entering a room.
Although Raffles Hall may only have a couple of room types, customising the corkboard is often the quickest—and easiest—way to bring life to your room. Unlike the tedious, weary process of bringing items like stuffed toys from and to, or reorganising your desk so that it’s not so cluttered, anything on the corkboard can be reshuffled in the blink of an eye. All it takes is a couple of pins and a sharp eye for detail, and boom—those items hanging on your corkboard may be the key to making this lonesome dorm room just a little more homely.
In this article, we take a look at six Rafflesians’ corkboards to see how they make use of their creative spaces.
The Empty One
Despite what people may assume, the percentage of people with empty corkboards in Raffles Hall is likely far higher than the general population believes. After all, items on a corkboard may seem simple, but there are many steps to be taken before decorating is even possible. Maybe they don’t have any pins and don’t want to buy them for their dorm room, since that would mean money better spent elsewhere. Or maybe their corkboard is suffering from a bad case of - ahem - very green, possibly living patches, and mahjong paper needs to be acquired before anything can come into contact with it since there’s only so much alcohol disinfectant can do.
(Definitely not speaking from personal experience, why do you ask? On that note, you can buy mahjong paper from Clementi’s NTUC…)
Regardless of the reasons, there’s no shame in having an empty corkboard, even if it makes your room look a little more desolate than the rest. Though, if you’re the sort that would love to get started but still need some inspiration… Perhaps the five examples below could give you some ideas?
The Decorator
There is no shortage of ways to decorate your room. Some people put up art prints, while others plaster their boards with photos of themselves and their friends. But there aren’t many corkboards with fairy lights and intertwined leaves around them like Marie’s! With the lights’ warm glow and the leaves framing the corkboard, these decorations transform the board into something that looks like it would fit right in at a holiday party. To round out the look, there are a few wildlife-themed items and prints, along with a (currently-empty) to-do list.
“I added the leaves first and it was like that for a while,” Marie said in a text interview. “But afterwards I had the lights and I wanted to use them, and I realised it would go really, really well with the leaves!”
A self-professed decorating enthusiast, Marie’s room is similarly adorned with trinkets and ornaments. As someone who decorated her room to the brim in Sem 1, Marie chose to pay for storage over the vacation period so that she wouldn’t have to redecorate anything when she came back.
When asked why she thinks decorating her room is important, Marie shared that making her room cozy and happy is part of how she carves out her own safe space in hall. Apart from the fun she has when decorating her corkboard, she also takes pride in inspiring other people to do the same. “It’s great when I get to show other people my room and they get inspired to decorate their own!”
The Utilitarian
It would be remiss of me not to put my own board up for inspection, wouldn’t it?
(…Admittedly, I’ve never had much of an eye for decorating.)
As a resident of Block 5, my corkboard differs drastically from the ones provided in Kuok. The sheer length of it, for one, means that I’m never going to be able to fill the space up entirely —but on the other hand, I can paste up pages of notes just fine.
The main items on my board are my linguistics notes and assorted art prints my art student friends have given me this semester; ones I keep pinned up in my room because I keep forgetting to bring them back home. At least this way they won’t languish away forlornly in the depths of my plastic folders…
As a natural messy hoarder, my room back home has items haphazardly piled up on one another, with my mother complaining about how I should be organising all of them. But with miscellaneous things like art prints and notes transported to hall, the mess at home reduces by half—and this way, I avoid my family nagging me about it, too!
This board may not appeal to everyone. Some would even say it’s sad. But for all intents and purposes, I mainly use it as a place to pin up notes for easy reference—information that I’ll need across mods for my major. The notes are pinned around where I usually use my computer, so I can easily glance at them while doing my assignments. Larger, more stable decorations like prints also ensure that I won’t wake up to fallen photos in the middle of the night.
And when it comes to the end of the semester—at least I’ll be able to pack the contents of my corkboard into one plastic folder!
Mess
Neat, ordered rows - who’s that? Maximising space? Never heard of her. Like a shiny Pokemon encounter in the wild, some corkboard decorators rebel against the norm, decorating their corkboard in an order only known to them. Though the overlapping arrangements may evoke a bit of a visceral reaction in anyone who’s a neat freak, this is also a genuinely creative way to give your corkboard a sense of flair.
When interviewed about her unconventional method to hanging up decor, Ginny said, “I have a string that I tie in a C shape and I just find space to hang stuff on the string if I can. I don’t have enough pins, so that’s why I use this.”
After a pause, she added, “And I use my remaining pins for stuff that string cannot hold the weight of.”
While this is definitely a more indirect way of decoration, this may be a useful tip for anyone who doesn’t have enough pins for their items or simply doesn’t want to damage their photostrips and notes with pin-holes!
Photospammer
Some people believe a picture says a thousand words. Well, these people live and die by the notion that with pictures, there’s no need for anything else!
If you’re a photospammer, you’re likely a social butterfly who attends many hall events - after all, having enough unique photostrips to cover your entire board is no small feat. And besides, for part of the population, photostrips may be much more convenient than things like fairy lights or art prints.
Regardless, many people tend to prioritise them on their corkboard due to the wonderful memories they contain of friends, CCAs and the bonds forged in Raffles Hall. At least two separate people interviewed stated that they tended to prioritise photostrips taken at block events, with one mentioning that she goes to block events specifically for the photo booths as much as possible. After all, having a physical photo is a reminder of each and every moment or celebration experienced in Raffles Hall. What would be better than having a corkboard full of photostrips?
All-In-One
If the Decorators and the Utilitarians are opposite sides of the corkboard spectrum, then most people will likely fall into the category of All-In-One, which combines the best of both worlds. A Rafflesian staying in Kuok, Anonymous Turtle’s board is a little more unique in that they hang many things from its base, ranging from decorative keychains to more useful everyday items like lanyards and watches. In their own words, they find this a convenient arrangement for both accessibility and beauty.
While surveying the corkboard, I asked Anonymous Turtle how they picked and chose what to hang on their corkboard. After all, the normal corkboards in Blocks 2 through 6 may be large and expansive, but space constraints are a very real issue in the mini Kuokboards hanging by the tables in Blocks 7 and 8.
“The priority is for pictures because there’s nowhere else to display them,” Anonymous Turtle told this interviewer. “If I run out of pins I just remove the less visually appealing items, like those flimsy papers.”
There’s some logic to Turtle’s words, as photo strips taken at various Raffles Hall events are usually the premier choice of decoration on corkboards. As memorabilia, they are relatively easy to obtain in hall and are a great way to show your appreciation for your friends!
Apart from the daily trinkets and photos lined up neatly in a row, there are also bits and pieces of merchandise Turtle enjoys hanging there to bring a little joy to the room.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve taken a look at three different kinds of corkboards, are you feeling a little more inspired to decorate your room? To some, this space may merely serve a functional purpose - a place to hang up items in a convenient and accessible location. But to others, the corkboards in their rooms are little windows into the personalities and lifestyles of their owners, with glimpses of their interests and loved ones scattered throughout.
To those whose boards are still empty and bereft - why wait? Hopefully, reading through this article has given you some inspiration to begin decorating your room with pieces of your life, too!
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