It’s Halloweekend — you’re excited, your friends are excited, everyone is putting on their costumes and preparing for night-long festivities; all of a sudden you get a text reminding you that you’ve got family dinner in the Village at 7 p.m.
This year, Halloweekend takes place on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday following the last day of October. Scarily enough, for Pomona College students, Family Weekend – when families of current students are welcomed to campus – happens to fall at the same time.
Halloweekend is the time for partying and celebrating with friends and strangers alike. Dressing up in masks and costumes, you can be anyone you want.
But your parents have known you your whole life — you can’t put on a mask around them. Even their presence alone can make us revert to our most vulnerable childhood selves, which may diminish the Halloweekend fun of masquerading — how are we supposed to enjoy a thrilling Halloween combined with a wholesome Family Weekend?
Merging these two events demonstrates the impact of college in shaping who we become as adults, and calls into question our obligations to our families.
My family lives across the country on the East Coast, I know no one from my hometown at any of the Claremont Colleges and my closest high school friend is in Ohio. So, college has been a way for me to try out a new life and see if I can exist as the person that I created on my own.
“No one would expose me for pretending to be something I’m not. Because in college, you’re not anything at first. “
When I first arrived in Claremont, I wondered if I should go by another name — I’d always been called my nickname “Ellie,” but what if I decided to be “Elisa,” my birth name? I could also dye my hair bright pink, claim I only drink black coffee in the mornings and be super outgoing all the time.
No one would expose me for pretending to be something I’m not. Because in college, you’re not anything at first.
In an assignment for my Critical Inquiry seminar, a required first-year course for Pomona students, I wrote about one of my friends from high school. I sent my final draft to this friend, and after reading the essay she responded, “I was so happy to be referred to as ‘hometown friend who enjoys playing video games and reading philosophy’ because I’ve been existing as a shell of a human being with no defining characteristics for the last month and it kind of reminded me of all of the living I’d done prior to coming here … so yay!”
Halloweekend is a fun time to test out new personalities, picking and choosing who to be for a night; no one cares who you are and half of the student body won’t even remember the next day. But there is also some comfort in having your parents remind you that “you” still exists.
It’s easy to feel like a shell of a human being and question who you are — whatever that might be — when we don’t have people around to keep us in check, affirming and remembering who we were in our past lives.
I have an older cousin in the class above me at Pomona. Although we’re second cousins, and I just really met him a couple of weeks ago, I feel a little more at ease when I’m in clubs or collegiate spaces with him. It’s nice having this stranger who assumes a sort of older brother figure; I can’t put up a facade without feeling silly, just because he’s family.
While college is a place to test out new ways of life, it’s possible — and maybe more comfortable — to sometimes revert to being your hometown self. Around family and childhood friends, we don’t have to justify ourselves or exert energy towards becoming an idealized, adult version of ourselves.
Instead, we can just slip back into the person we used to be.
So, my best advice? Make sure you have a diverse array of costumes ready for all of your different selves. There are three days (four if you count this past Thursday on actual Halloween). Prepare to separate your morning and night outfits, and personalities, accordingly.
Spend your nights enjoying yourself with your friends, but give your mornings to your families. Let them treat you to brunch, laugh at the dad jokes and wear your old high-school T-shirts. Relish the opportunity to be a kid again. There is no reason to perform: your parents already know that “you” aren’t that cool anyway.
Ellie Chi PO ’28 is from Clarksville, Maryland. Her New Year’s resolution is always to be more honest, and she honestly really enjoys reading “The Catcher in the Rye.”
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