Halloween is one of the most religiously sacred holidays for college kids; forget about Christmas or Easter. Halloween season starts earlier and earlier every year. And when college comes around, it makes a rapid evolution from candy and scary movies to costume parties and late nights out. Halloween is more than just one evening in college, the fun gets stretched out across the weekend or even the whole week. It earns affectionate names such as Halloweek or Halloweekend, which is beneficial for years such as this one in which the holiday falls on a weekday, like Monday (thanks Obama).

It seems that with such a rapidly expanding Halloween culture, professors would grant us some leniency for the few days around Halloween. This, however, is not the case. I had a paper due the Friday night before Halloween, have a midterm on Halloween itself, a paper due that night, and another midterm two days later. First of all, it is no longer midterm week. With less than six weeks left of the semester, it’s closer to finals than it is to midterms, which makes the word itself pretty irrelevant at this point in my life. Second of all, I did not intend to make time for studying in my Halloweekend schedule, but now I’m going to have to pencil that in. It seems almost like a cruel and unusual punishment for professors to ask hung-over college kids to focus on school work, do well on exams, and remember facts and dates when they can barely remember the best costumes from the weekend before. My anger with this situation seems to stem back to the fact that many of my college applications were due October 31st last year. But, if my World Literature and Sociology professors want me to be studious, I guess it wouldn’t be terrible to bring my flashcards with me to a party. Hey, I could even take it up a notch and dress as my academic failures for Halloween. Maybe that would get me some extra credit points.