Halloween is more about the hype than the execution. You spend weeks scrolling through Pinterest and TikTok, saving the most elaborate and witty costumes you can find, and then midterms hit. You get pulled under the swell of projects and tests and presentations and before you know it you’re a week from Halloween. Nothing you want to order is going to come in time, and the realization hits that your friend group’s strategy of “we’ll figure out our plans as we get closer” is not a good one.
Freshman year, I planned three very elaborate friend group costumes, perfectly curated for the frat parties we thought we would go to. The funny thing about being a freshman fresh out of your goody-two-shoes high school era is you actually have no idea how to get into a frat or even what frats are hosting. My first Halloween at Stevens I lurked on frat row with my friends trying to suss out if there was a freshman-friendly frat. Funnily enough, we got scared and ended up going home because when approaching the freshman frat an upperclassmen yelled, “Yah! Go in there…if you’re a freshman.” We took this as a genuine threat rather than real commentary, and decided to just go home.
Sophomore and junior year were basically identical and lazily thrown together. Halloween was a side project in the grand scheme of life. As an initiate of greek life, it was easy to just lurk on frat row and bounce between various social settings, donning flimsily thrown together costumes. Junior year only gets an honorable mention as we were still in the dark ages of the greek life social ban in which the social scene was essentially non-existent.
Now I am a senior, and I swore to put the most effort possible into the last hurrah. I planned my costumes far in advance, bought bar crawl tickets, and planned out my three day escapade. I’m pretty proud of my costumes; for one night my friend custom crocheted me a “very hungry caterpillar scarf” which I wore with a green dress and a bug antenna headband, and the other night I dressed up as the bill from the Schoolhouse Rock! “I’m Just a Bill” song. Execution is alas, still mid. The issue with Hoboken bar crawls is that weekends are busy — you spend way too long waiting in lines for bars, entirely defeating the purpose of paying to go out. Most of my evening was spent waiting in one very very long line in the freezing cold. So, alas I close out my last college Halloweekend knowing that Halloween is more about the anticipation than the result. Perhaps next year I will host a themed party from the comfort of my own home, safe from the packed streets of Hoboken. At least you know that you can gain entry into your own home!
