So, you finished your big project, you adjusted the margins, and printed it out. Now, you need to make sure those pages stay together between now and the time they’re graded. Here’s what your go-to option for keeping pages together says about your personality, your life philosophy, and your destiny.

Loose

You are a free spirit, embracing the zen philosophy. Others may call you disorganized, but you prefer to think of yourself as discovering your own path. Just as one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but by its contents, you believe that an assignment shouldn’t be judged by how it is organized, but by the effort put into it. You have the confidence to take risks and live your truth regardless of what the world says.

Hole punched in a binder

You are an innovator and a problem solver. You think deeply about the issues facing the world today, and believe in the power of human creativity and intellect to overcome complicated challenges. You have a highly refined sense of style and dress for success.

Regular Paperclip

You pride yourself on being practical and level headed in all areas of life. You believe in the supremacy of facts and logic over everything. You read the instructions, measuring twice and cutting once. What others mistake for indecisiveness is a laudable willingness to change your mind. Among your social group, you’re the one most likely to be prepared in an emergency, but you never get in emergencies because you avoid them in the first place. Some describe themselves as results people, but you care about process above all.

Stapled

Bold and decisive in the face of challenge, you are a natural leader. You believe the simplest solution is usually the best. Never one to back down from a challenge, you do not hesitate to back up your words with actions. You identify with the tale of Alexander the Great, slicing through the Gordian knot. You take courage in your decisions, which are rooted in a firm moral compass.

Binder Clip

You are an old soul with a deep appreciation of wisdom. You know that nothing on this earth is permanent, and yet the wheel turns; the endless cycle of endings and beginnings, death and rebirth, of binding papers together only to take them apart, continues. In your past lives you may have been a scholar or guru, and so you find yourself among the familiar in settings like libraries and archives. Beware of whose words you include as you consider your collected volumes. 

Clear folder or plastic sleeve

You are a consummate rule follower, and of your virtue you are justly proud. You harbor a burning hatred against those deviants who can’t properly organize assignments, and long to see the world purged of such crimes against organized civilization. People describe you as high strung, but secretly you believe that you’re normal, and they’re all slackers. You like flash cards and organizers, and have your future all planned out, if only the world would stick to the schedule.

Novelty paper clip

You are compensating for a deep seated anxiety. You desperately want to show that you have moxie; that you’re an exciting character. Despite pretensions to the contrary, however, you are a mostly boring and ordinary person. Deep down, you realize you are okay with this. Most of the world is statistically ordinary, after all, and there is a certain happiness in the tranquility of normalcy. So long as you can bring a bit of whimsy and a touch of personality to the day to day, what’s so wrong about a calm life?

Taped together

You have a solution that works; if other people don’t like it, that’s their problem. Other people call you curmudgeonly. You have long ceased caring what other people think. Not everyone has the willpower to do what needs to be done, but you do. You think including class participation in grading is discriminatory against introverts and misanthropes, and would campaign on behalf of any candidate that promises to outlaw group projects forever.

Opaque folder, envelope, or dossier

You are either a faculty member, staff member, work closely with them, or are destined to join them.