Editor’s note: Tat-Tuesday is a weekly series that features students around campus and their tattoos.

Samantha Brewer
Although psychology sophomore Samantha Brewer’s collarbone tattoo is tiny, to her, it has colossal meaning. She said she often gets caught up in day-to-day things and it’s a helpful reminder to be as true as she can to herself.

“The lotus symbolizes, across many cultures, rebirth and purity,” Brewer said. “For me, I got it during a time when I really needed to hold on to what I considered to be my most pure version of myself — adhering to what makes you who you are.”

Amber Allen
In 2010, biology senior Amber Allen went on a mission trip to Haiti to help with earthquake relief. She got a tattoo to remember the excursion that changed her life.

“That trip is what made me want to do medicine,” Allen said. “Now, I’ve received my acceptance to medical school and it’s all feeling very real. That’s what started it. I had never really been around medicine before. To experience it in such a desperate place, it changed my world.”

Besides a few years of experience with Spanish in high school, Allen found herself unable to fully express herself in Haiti. So, she had to find other ways to communicate.

She said she feels Psalms 119:105, which she has tattooed on her foot, summarizes her experience in Haiti.

“It says ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,’” Allen said. “We were in a place where we didn’t speak their language very well and were trying to communicate. His word was something that we could both use to communicate.”

Lily Gonzales
During her senior year of high school, theater and dance sophomore Lily Gonzales found herself in need of some grounding and direction.

She found that in the Descartes philosophy, “I think, therefore I am.”

“Senior year of high school is the moment when people think you’re going to change — when you’re deciding what you want to do, where you want to be,” Gonzales said. “It’s such an overwhelming experience. It was good to just be grounded back and say that I’m responsible for all of this.”