Alas, it is upon us: formal season.

Fraternity formals are like a mini-vacation. You get to go away for the weekend to a nice hotel (at the expense of your date, of course), get dressed up, and take all the cute pictures that your heart desires. What could be more perfect?

But wait, there's a catch. Tradition says that you must paint a cooler for your date to fill with all kinds of goodies for formal weekend. This in itself is not a big deal, but if you’re anything like me, you're naturally inartistic, making this a much bigger task than it should be. It seems that everybody around you has these amazing, perfectly painted formal coolers, leaving you less than confident in your own artistic abilities. This leads to an obscene amount of Pinterest research and late-night craft store raids to get that one shade of paint that you forgot to pick up. The deadline is always closer than you expect and you're bound to run into a few bumps in the road along the way. You found the perfect cooler, you tracked down someone with a power sander, carefully planned out all of the designs, and now it's time to get started. The pressure is on.

Anyone who has painted a formal cooler before knows all too well this vicious cycle of blood, sweat, and tears that come with your efforts to be the coolest formal date ever. So, here is a list of feelings associated with painting the infamous formal cooler, as told by gifs.

You finally got asked to a fraternity formal!

And... his formal is in one week.

So you start looking for ideas on Pinterest like...

You're convinced that you personally could be putting craft stores out of stock.

And using a power sander makes you feel like you can take on the world.

Looking at girls on cooler connection groups whose coolers look like they belong in a museum.

While this is how you feel painting yours.

You think you're dong so well, but then you accidentally smear black paint all over your white background.

And this is your third night in a row staying up past midnight to finish it.

When you're finally finished painting, but now you have to apply the sealant.

And it's taking forever to dry.

But after all the steps, it actually turned out way better than you thought it would.

So whether you're a new-age Picasso or can't even paint in a straight line, we're all in this together. Embrace those late nights with acrylic paint all over your hands, because in the end, you'll be known as the best formal date ever for giving him an amazing cooler. Here's to a great formal and an even greater cooler to commemorate it.

Happy painting, Ladies!