Halloween is upon us. Walking through my neighborhood, I’m bombarded with an onslaught of skeletons, spider stickers on garage doors, and witches that cackle when you get within a six-foot distance. But I have become apathetic. I stare blankly at the occult couple waltzing on my neighbor’s lawn. I wrinkle my nose when the scent of candy corn proliferates through the grocery store. I stay silent when someone asks who I am going to be for Halloween.
After all, my college applications are due tomorrow.
I opened the Common Application portal a week ago to discover with much alarm that five of my colleges now have a red alarm clock beside them, counting down to the day of my reckoning: November 1. As early application deadlines loom, the holiday cheer I used to revel in has been stripped away. All I’m left with is a festering sense of urgency, endlessly barraged by supplemental essays and deadlines until nothing else remains.
At this time last year, I recall buzzing about what costume I would wear, which festive movie to play on Friday night, and where the best neighborhood to trick-or-treat was. Armed with a pumpkin spice latte, I’d point and laugh at crude Halloween displays, skipping around my neighborhood to revel in the all-encompassing spirit of Halloween. Yesterday, I got myself a pumpkin spice latte as an homage to my old self. As I sipped it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sipping away my future–here I was, sitting passively at a cafe table while my untouched essays floundered at home. Nauseated, I threw the drink away.
Now that I’m on the thirteenth draft of my personal statement, I’m starting to feel marginally better. This is a lie; I’ve been going mad. The bags under my eyes are practically permanent—I heard some underclassmen whispering the other day about how if my eyebags grew any larger, I wouldn’t even have to carry around my senior backpack anymore.
In the rare moments where I can contemplate the meaning of life — a short reprieve from an endless onslaught of essays — I mourn the days of old. I miss complaining about SAT registrations, calc quizzes, and summer program applications. I miss the ability to doomscroll without feeling the immeasurable guilt of throwing away my future. The college application process has robbed me of my holiday jubilee, leaving an aching emptiness once filled with trick-or-treat candies.
Halloween is dead to me. The college application process is the only haunting I’ll be receiving during this season. Like a zombie, it chases after me, determined to eat my brains. But thankfully, my early applications will be done and dusted by the week’s end. For a fleeting moment, I might even be able to celebrate the festivities I’ve missed.
However, the coming holidays are fated to be swallowed up as well. With UC applications due December 1, I’m already resigned to losing the Thanksgiving season. Instead of gorging myself on turkey and cranberry jam, I’ll be holed up in my room, typing away at essay drafts that get deleted immediately. Then, during December, I’ll be lost in a haze of regular decision applications that will consume both Christmas and New Year’s. The holiday festivities I once looked forward to — hot chocolate, candy canes, stockings, jingle bell rocking — all will melt away beside the furnace of my college applications, kindled by the coal of unfinished essays.
Perhaps I’ll be able to breathe after that, my eyebags shrinking back until I once again resemble a normal human being. Come January, my mind might even be clear enough to properly mourn everything I missed, every holiday chased away by the brain-eating monster named College Applications. But while being future-focused is a trait I’m highlighting in my essays, I really can’t bother to revel in such hope when my applications are due tomorrow.
