I Dressed Up as an Alien Freshman Year: An Apology

By: Rebecca Crosby

I have a confession to make. I’ve thought about this for a while, and after a lot of advice, and a lot of therapy, I’ve decided that I need to come clean: during my freshman year of college, I, too, dressed up in a basic alien costume for Halloween. I know.

I put my hair up in space buns, bought a reflective T-shirt for under $5 on Amazon, and called it a day. In order to seem more otherworldly, I made the egregious mistake of putting silver glitter all over my body. Legend has it if you look hard enough you can still see it lodged deep inside my pores.

First of all, I want to publicly apologize for anyone that I have let down. I know that this news might come as a shock to some, but I promise, I have changed, and I hope you give me the chance to prove myself.

Part of me is most disappointed in my past self because I didn’t even fully commit to the costume. I couldn't be bothered to put on antennas or something. I even have pictures doing the “Live long and prosper” signal. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

But if we’re being completely honest, there is something else I need to get off of my chest, something that goes much deeper than my shamefully halfhearted extraterrestrial antics. It has hung over my head for years, haunting me and following me no matter how hard I try to escape it. I think part of the reason for my horrendously unoriginal freshman year costumes boils down to the fact that I do not like Halloween.

Hear me out! Most of this annoyance towards the sacred spooky day can be blamed on the fact that I grew up in Vermont. Trick or treating is very different there than in Washington, D.C. as nine times out of ten, there will be snow on the ground by Halloween. This means that your mom or other legal guardian will argue with you for days before All Hallow’s Eve about wearing a parka over your costume, eventually escalating the situation by making you wear layers upon layers both under and over your costume, ruining the months of planning and preparation you put into making the best Harry Potter costume yet.

When I got to college, I realized there were so many more aspects to Halloween to find unlikable, such as when you dress up in one of the world’s most basic costumes freshman year and it haunts you for the rest of your college career. Or when frat boys think it’s “funny and ironic” to dress up as cops or AUPD. Or maybe when you decide to make a drinking game out of how many girls you see dressed up as angels and devils in one night and end up sick beyond supernatural intervention.

Despite all of my qualms, quarantine has made me realize something. After being stuck inside my house for months, it would have been great to be able to go out this Halloween, wear a cheap costume, and finally, feel something again. (If you’re planning on doing that this year, don’t.) Maybe, after all this, I will actually miss Halloween.

All of this deep self-reflection has really got me thinking about how the freshman class this year are going to come across their own personal growth. While my freshman year of college was easily my worst, it made me who I am today. Every college freshman makes mistakes and does shameful things on campus, but it’s the deep groveling in self embarrassment that made us all better people.

How can the freshman class have these experiences when their social interactions consist of sleeping through Zoom calls and family dinners with their parents? They might think that accidentally unmuting themselves on Zoom while gushing over the basic white boys in their class or having their parents catch them sneaking out at midnight just to walk around the block are embarrassing events. However, I think we can all agree that they will not be able to experience the true, deep and shameful lows that we all hit in our first year on campus.

I came here to apologize for my own past actions, but I think we can all agree that the people we should really feel sorry for are the freshman that will not be dressing up in basic costumes that eventually lead to their own growth and self-awareness. To the freshman out there, and I truly mean this, I hope that you find some socially distant way to embarrass yourself so badly that you, too, can become a better person.