The month before junior English major Rachel Lees got her first tattoo her thigh itched constantly.

“I knew I had to get it. I was like, ‘This is it! This is it,’” said Lees.

Although she didn’t know exactly what she wanted, Lees said she’d always felt that there needed to be something on her thigh. She decided on five star outlines.

“Even when I was a little girl, before I even really knew about tattoos, I just knew that I wanted to have art all over my body,” said Lees.

Undoubtedly, people get spur-of-the-moment tribal tattoos across their lower backs because it seems like a good idea while in Cancun, but for others a tattoo means so much more.

For them, tattoos are part of them long before the ink even touches their skin. The image and meaning behind the tattoo has to be exact before they are confident enough to go under the needle, and some people think for years before committing.

Sophomore television-radio major Nicole Valentino had wanted a tattoo since she was a child but didn’t know exactly what. The summer after her high-school graduation she began looking into tattoos more thoroughly. She found a butterfly image on the wall of a tattoo parlor and she fell in love with it after it was customized.

Valentino had the image enlarged and elaborated, adding a ying- yang to the wing. To Valentino the ying-yang represents eternal friendship and the butterfly symbolizes breaking free.

“I was 18. I was always punished. I was always grounded. I never really did anything rebellious … I was pretty much a good kid and I was like, ‘You know what, I need to do something for myself,’” said Valentino.

Customizing tattoos is a way to add personal meaning to what could otherwise be looked at as a generic rebellious whim.

Sophomore health sciences major Christopher Sosnowski thought about his first tattoo for four years before he turned 18 and went to the tattoo parlor across the street from his house. Like Valentino, he customized his tattoo, putting his own personal spin on the logo of the superhero Spawn. His two other tattoos — which he got this summer — he designed from scratch after going through at least three ideas until he found the perfect representation.

The tattered wing on his back and the corresponding stitched- up-scar tattoo on the opposite shoulder blade, which Sosnowski planned for nearly a year before getting the tattoos this past summer, are reminders that no matter how grim things seem he can pull through and he must never give up.

Sosnowski said he doesn’t have any current plans for more tattoos, but if he does decide to add to his collection, the images would have to mean something special to him, and he’d draw them himself.

“[When you design your own tattoo] then it’s your tattoo, it’s not something you’re going to see on someone else,” said Sosnowski.

Breaking free and establishing individuality are popular reasons for tattoos, but people also use tattoos as a way of visually reminding themselves of their beliefs, values or hard-learned lessons.

Though Japanese character tattoos are so clichéd that everyone seems to have one, some people choose these characters not for the look, but for their connection to Japanese culture.

Jared Azuma, a freshman physical therapy major, has five Japanese symbols on his shoulder blade. Azuma thought about his tattoo for a year and a half, and he chose the symbols based not only on their face value meaning, but also for what they represent to him.

For Azuma, who is half Japanese, the five symbols representing the words eternity, strength and fate serve as a link to his heritage and a reminder of the values he holds and the lessons he’s learned.

“Anyone can just get a tattoo that says love. I feel like I love my family, my friends, people who are close to me until eternity, without end,” Azuma said about his choice.

“Strength” reminds Azuma that he can survive hardships and the loss of loved ones. “Fate” is what those losses taught him, that he shouldn’t try to make sense of the world.

While Sosnowski’s wing and scar tattoos are symbolic of more recently established values, he decided on his first tattoo when he was 14 to serve as a reminder of the beliefs he’s held since he was young.

“[The message of Spawn is that] you should fight for the people you truly love and put them before yourself,” said Sosnowski.

Meaningful tattoos can be symbolic of beliefs, like Azuma’s and Sosnowski’s tattoos. They can commemorate loved ones, like the three Valentino plans on getting to memorialize her uncle, who has survived stage four cancer, and her grandparents. Or they can complete a person who feels like something’s missing.

Lees, who also designs tattoos and hopes to one day go into the tattoo business, said her tattoos are more design oriented than meaning driven.

A self-proclaimed fan of classic tattoos, Lees has plans for at least three more tattoos, but instead of a representative or commemorative meaning, her tattoos are meant to complete the decoration of her body.

She’s planned her next tattoo — flames tipped in purple going up each side of her body — since she was 12 years old.

“It’s a way of making me comfortable in my own skin,” Lees said. “It’s like what I felt needed to be there.”

College students get tattoos just because they’re young and impulsive. There are plenty of young people who think before they ink and who say they will never regret their tattoos because they are more a part of them than just the ink. For some, a tattoo is an outward representation of deeper beliefs, memories and feelings. It isn’t something that can be easily removed or changed when it becomes outgrown or tiresome.

“It’s not an accessory,” said Lees. “It’s not a necklace.”