The reasons you should fall for fall

But looming over our heads are the dastardly final exams, final papers and final projects. Spring might be full of fun weekends, but that just makes the weeks in between that much harder. Personally I much prefer the innocence of the fall.

Autumn is my favorite season but not for the changing leaves or the Starbucks drinks. I love the excitement we all still feel for the semester ahead and for the classes that we know are going to kill us. Maybe this time we’ll enjoy getting kicked in the ass. I love the wide eyes of all the new freshmen who are thrilled to be at a school like this.

Check your privilege, upperclassmen, and take a hint from those baby freshmen. Hopkins might be hard and Hopkins might not be conducive to a super healthy mind, but we go to a great school and are so lucky to have the opportunity to go here. The freshmen in the fall, not yet jaded by all-nighters in Brody, have the clearest vision of their good fortune.

I feel like for many, this semester imitates the weather — and for Baltimore that means unpredictable and dramatic shifts in temperature.

Upon arrival in August, we’re all warm and happy and our cheeks are pink from the sun and our smiles. Even as it gets colder, we don’t mind. After the hot and humid sweats of the last few weeks of the Baltimore summer, we readily embrace the cool breeze of autumn and don’t really mind the necessity to stay indoors and do our schoolwork. It’s colder — we don’t need to be outside.

Winter arrives at our worst moments. Fall semester finals hit us hard, and snowfall and blizzards hit us harder. Winter sucks. I think we can all agree that winter is basically the worst. Sure snow is fun for like two days. But slipping on ice is not fun. Final exams are not fun. Yes, Intersession is fun, but a winter that lingers way past its groundhog-certified expiration date has no business being at this school.

Spring brings with it sunshine and smiles. Spring Fair arrives and Hopkins becomes Coachella — is it a coincidence that Weekend One also began last Friday? People dress like hippies, surfers or whatever you’d like to call them. Lace bralettes and salmon shorts are everywhere. It’s like we’ve forgotten about school.

School certainly hasn’t forgotten about us. We’ve got papers, exams, projects and problem sets. For me at least, Spring Fair is a bit of a nuisance. I can’t justly stay indoors and work when there are a million different ways for me to spend all of my money just 100 feet from my room. But soon enough, the fun times will be over and all my stress and anxiety will creep back into my life, distraction-free.

Finals. Finals. Finals. How many times have I mentioned the horrors of finals? Maybe finals week isn’t so terrible for some. But when you’ve performed excruciatingly poor on a midterm and you really need this final to raise your grade or you won’t pass the class and then you have to drop the major, finals are kind of a big deal. So yeah, I’d say that kind of takes a little bit of fun away from the beauty of spring.

Maybe I’m a pessimist, but spring definitely isn’t my favorite season at Hopkins. I’m all for the sunny skies, and I won’t stop anyone from day drinking, but I much prefer the fall, when we’re still excited about our futures at this school instead of our futures away from it.