Anonymous Students Spread Post- It Notes, Positivity, and Persistence

On March 26th, students walked into Buffalo High School at the beginning of the week, expecting nothing out of the ordinary, nothing other than a replication of every other school day. Little did they know the lockers, classrooms, and hallways were to be filled with color and positive phrases.

It was unknown when students walked into the school exactly who the creator was and why they did it. No student stepped up, no announcements were made, and the school was left questioning the anonymous person who stood behind Post-It note mystery.

Junior Danielle Bottiger spent a night at school earlier this month counting every locker and classroom in the school, making sure to not miss a single door. In hopes of carrying out a plan that would spread positivity and make finals week a little better, an idea sprung up on her that she decided would be a little easier with friends, music, and a lot of sharpies. Juniors Teagan Saylor, Elizabeth Lawrence, Megan Rempel, Anastasia Hensel, Sam Poeschel, Madeline Hill, Emma Hill, Anna Ebnet, Collins Kuns, Makenzie Wondra, and Makenzie Fladung assisted Bottiger in her enlightening idea. 2,000 colorful Post-It notes were to be covered in unique positive phrases and plastered all over the school in preparation of finals week to help brighten up the stressful last days of the quarter.

“Finals week is stressful and I had a bunch of fun making these, it took a long time but I laughed a lot making these, looking at quotes, hanging them up, I got to run around the school.” Bottiger said.

Bottiger and Saylor revealed Google was a huge help with the phrases. With over 2,000 things to write, they admitted they repeated a few quotes, and some of them were just to lighten the mood of those reading.

“Some of them were funny like ‘you have nice feet’ and other ones just were like ‘have a nice day’ or ‘I’m glad you exist’,” Bottiger said with a smile on her face.

On a survey of 81 students,. 66.3% said the Post-It notes had a positive effect on their Monday and 76.5% said they’d enjoy seeing something similar to this during future finals weeks. A few students shared their reactions to the whole event.

“The Post-It notes provide a new source of motivation,” Sophomore Alexis Nichols said in her response to the survey. “For me I know it helped me continue on with my day when I hit a very rough patch. The post its were always encouraging and supportive everytime I walked into each locker bay or classroom. It’s fun to walk around the school and see the lining the lockers in the special ed hallway as well as the music area. I’ve tried to go around and read them all during the week, and it’s a nice pop of color in our ordinary lives. It also was an awesome surprise on Monday to see all of the colors all over the school. I instantly feel better when I read them during my day.”

The group of about 11 spent about half a day on making sure they had the correct amount of Post-It notes so no one would be left out.

“I spent 14 hours making them and I think the average person spent about six to eight hours on it and then an hour to hang them up,” Bottiger said. “ We made 1,981 [Post-It notes] and then we were like, okay, we’re just going to do one more stack and then we’re going to be done, so it was definitely over 2,000.”