Thoughts, Trends & Truths on personal branding for Gen Z.
Students at Penn started calling it SABSing, short for see and be seen, and somehow that one word explains a habit I've watched play out on Speedway all year without ever having a word for it.
A UT lab just built a patch that boosts REM sleep without pills or surgery. The science is cool, but the branding shift underneath it is what I keep thinking about.
Sports betting didn't suddenly show up on college campuses this year. What's new is how normal it looks now.
Over the past month, several graduation speakers have gotten the same reaction from students: booing. Not because they were politicians, not because they said something controversial, but because they talked about AI.
I realized something strange this week while walking across Speedway, and it turned into a thought about how brands actually become part of people's lives.
There's a graduation trend going around TikTok right now, and what people are really posting about is a version of themselves that disappeared faster than they expected.
I didn't set out to think this hard about a TikTok trend. But once you notice the "can you see me?" videos, you start seeing them everywhere, and not just online.
I dropped one prompt into ChatGPT and got a full UT "day in the life" comic back. It took less time to create than to actually look at.
Everyone's talking about "microtrips" right now, and honestly? At UT it's just what we already do. One free day, a car, and somewhere to go.
Spend a couple of hours at the Perry–Castañeda Library and something starts to stand out. It looks like a normal college study scene, but the way people are working feels different. Almost no one is approaching school the way students did even a few years ago.
Spring break is still the headline — March 14th plans, Airbnb splits, who's rooming with who. But if you listen closely, another question keeps surfacing between the excitement: "Do you have an internship yet?" And honestly? That question feels earlier than it used to.
If you're a small business owner staring at your perfectly curated, color-coded Instagram grid wondering why engagement is flat, I need to say this with love: the ultra-polished aesthetic is kind of over.
Student orgs at UT Austin look super welcoming from the outside. Info sessions feel chill. Social posts make everything seem open and accessible. Then recruitment hits, and you realize there's a LOT more going on.
There are parts of campus where you automatically dress differently, even if you'd never say that out loud. You're not planning an outfit for each building. But somehow, you don't wear the exact same thing everywhere. It just adjusts on its own.
Trips still happen. Relationships still happen. New phases, new habits, new eras, all happening. But instead of hard launches, captions, and full documentation, a lot of it is quietly living on close friends, private stories, or not online at all.
If you think TikTok is still about chasing viral sounds and hoping the algorithm blesses you, think again. The platform feels quieter, faster, and way more personal now. Gen Z isn't scrolling to be entertained. We're scrolling to figure things out. Here's what that means for small businesses.
While headlines claim Black Friday is dying, TikTok tells a different story. Gen Z isn't abandoning the shopping tradition. We're remixing it into something better: aesthetic, authentic, and deeply personal. Here's why hauls aren't going anywhere.
At UT Austin, you can go viral without even trying. From the girl filming TikToks on Moody Bridge to the guy who cuts the Texas Union coffee line every morning, college is a whole ecosystem of micro-celebrities and unspoken reputations. Here's what I've learned about identity on the Forty Acres.
Gen Z's latest obsession? Core stacking: mixing mini-aesthetics like 'tomato girl core' and 'library core' into one signature vibe. On campus, it's not just fashion. It's identity remixing. And for small businesses, it's your cheat code.
Campus cool isn't about popularity anymore — it's about presence. The new kind of cool is calm, confident, and real. It's how you show up when no one's filming — the energy you bring, the kindness you give, and the causes you care about. From style to self-awareness, being cool on campus now means being authentic.