It’s that time of year again! You know, the time of year when students and adults alike employ child-like imagination and creative ingenuity all in the name of legitimizing costume parties and themed gatherings: Halloween. There are gory thrillers to cower through and troves of chocolate candy bars to be eaten. There are pun-ridden costume parties to dream up and an onslaught of pumpkin patch pictures to grudgingly scroll through.
Some folks love Halloween as an excuse to tell tall tales of ghoulish stories and muse over hocus-pocus adventuring, but it really isn’t necessary to save all this up for just one spooky weekend a year. If you’re into spirits and suspense, magic and make-believe, or just straight-up terror, there are other events around the corner far more frightful than Halloween night.
Exhibit A: student loans. If you are having a pleasant, afternoon stroll but are looking to stumble into some crippling anxiety, just think about your student debt. Not only will adding up the years it will take to pay it off horrify you, but once you add in the dark, stormy cloud of capitalized interest, you’re frozen in fear. Yikes!
The haunted hayride keeps on rolling when thoughts linger on the presidential election. There is nothing that stands your hair on end quite like the high-stakes transition of power in a looming election. Talk about intimidation tactics! And you thought that lifelike faces carved into orange, glowing pumpkins were frightful enough…
Finally, other quirky holidays are not to be ignored. Take Groundhog’s Day. While Punxsutawney Phil is just minding his own business-as-usual each February, it is reasonable that, after seeing his shadow, he runs back into the safety of his hole. Eerie! Six more weeks of winter! Cold, blowing wind, sunless skies, and an insular campus life: s-p-o-o-k-y, indeed.
