The Monster Mash, held Oct. 31, invited students to celebrate Halloween in full swing with trick-or-treating, costume contests and photo ops, and in a strange twist of academic burnout, I found myself walking to BAHT despite having a backpack full of notes to revise. I wasn’t sure what to expect aside from knowing that the Monster Mash is an annual event. So, I was surprised when the event had a chaotically vibrant layout of costume contests and free food, creating a lively atmosphere amid midterm season. After spending an hour catching up with friends and wandering between trick-or-treat tables, I realized UTD doesn’t provide students with enough events like this throughout the year. Events such as the Monster Mash serve as a vital reminder that college should be more than academics.
Finals and midterms are a notoriously stressful time for college students. An April 2023 study by Timely Care, a virtual mental health and medical service app, shows that finals and exams are identified as the top stressor for 31% of college students in the nation. As a pre-health student, October can feel like an academic marathon, where all the exams and projects that make or break our GPA are crammed into a month. While going to the Monster Mash wasn’t planned, it gave me an opportunity to meet friends I haven’t seen in a while and gave me a moment to pause and enjoy a moment in between all the chaos.
Even if commuting to campus is long and tedious, especially for an event, it is still important to take a break and attend just to find a brief reprieve. Events like the Monster Mash act as a necessary counterbalance to stress by emphasizing community bonding and every college student’s favorite component: free food.
Even if commuting to campus is long and tedious, especially for an event, it is still important to take a break and attend just to find a brief reprieve.
I grew up thinking classes are the only important part of university life. While we are attending university to study and build a career, taking breaks will prevent you from burning out. These events are not a waste of time, but rather serve as a brief recovery activity to help with overall concentration and stress management. In the end, the Monster Mash was more than costumes and candy. Such events help me feel as if I’m not just a student responding to deadlines. I’m a person who deserves at least 30 minutes of memories before venturing off to do a Quizlet.
The event has made me realize that UTD doesn’t provide enough events for students to partake in. Even the events going on right now, such as club activities, are often not advertised enough,. As a current junior, I realized late into my college career that you would either need an extremely social friend to tell you about activities or be chronically online to the point your feed keeps you in the loop.
I realized late into my college career that you would either need an extremely social friend to tell you about activities or be chronically online to the point your feed keeps you in the loop.
As students with our own career and life goals, we don’t have the time to curate a constant list of interesting on-campus events to attend. While the Comet Calendar in the UTD app does show on-campus events, it fails to show student-led ones. Furthermore, the app doesn’t have the best approach to cater to a student’s interests. If a student wants to attend a campus event solely for free food, the calendar is too time consuming to comb through to find such events. Even curating events for this article became time consuming, as there is no one point of contact to look for on-campus events. The university itself needs to develop a more efficient system that allows one to easily browse through events that cater to the niche interests and hobbies of our student body. In doing so, it will allow students to become more involved on campus and have a balanced academic and social life.
Until such a system exists, however, students should depend on each other to figure out what holiday events, finals festivities and other activities are available to take the edge off academic stress. Students interested in art or art history can view the SP/N Gallery’s ongoing “The Horror Part 2: A Haunting” exhibition or artwork from postwar Japan and Korea after the 1950s at the Athenaeum. Students interested in broader events, especially those that usually have free food, can check out SUAAB’s November and December events. Lastly, for students who might want an event that blends productivity and creativity, especially during finals week, should look into the Stressbusters events hosted at the end of every semester. The Stressbusters events are held during finals week to help students take a brief pause from studying. In the previous semesters, my favorite event was when students got to interact with therapy dogs.
Until such a system exists, however, students should depend on each other to figure out what holiday events, finals festivities and other activities are available to take the edge off academic stress.
These gatherings remind us that college isn’t only about lectures and late-night study sessions. It’s about creating joy that turns our academic years into fond memories. As students, we often feel guilty for taking breaks, even if the rest is earned. The urge to continuously peak until our end goal is reached is a completely normal feeling. However, to succeed in such goals, it is important to take a break and embark on side quests that have nothing to do with academic pursuits. I encourage everyone to take a break when possible, even if it’s just 30 minutes. I personally like to attend the weekly fitness classes offered on campus at no additional cost.
So, as we move into the holidays, let’s keep the spirit thriving. Making time for the small things, the people, the music and the food makes our academic years less grueling. When we look back into the past, we may not remember the exact score we got on a biochemistry midterm or how many Anki decks we’ve gone through, but we may remember the time our friends dragged us out of our study spot to get free food on campus. While we may not know where we will be in the next five or 40 years, we know for sure that taking the time to nourish our spirits — and stomachs — will keep our college experience from becoming all doom and gloom.