Love it or Hate it: Formal Season

Love It: Sorry Autumn, This is the Best Season of the Year — Rachel L. Reynolds

The time has finally come to put away those psets and papers, and pick up your fancy dresses and bowties. Formal season has come to pull you out of that deep midterm season funk and let you dance your cares away before finals. With some bopping music, fun themes, and great pals, there really is something for everyone to enjoy.

Are you the friend who shows up to class every day dressed to the nines? Get ready for the perfect opportunity to get even more dolled up than usual. We all love a chance to do some online shopping in order to procrastinate, and this is truly no exception! Do you thrive as the mom of the group in any situation? Get ready to hype up all of your best pals and capture their best angles as the designated photographer a la “Mean Girls.” And even if you’re just there to see your dhall crush looking even better than usual or maybe to get that perfect post for your Instagram, you can’t go wrong here. More than anything, formal szn is the time to live out all those classic teen movies of your dreams!

Hate It: You’re Bad at Dancing Anyway — Michelle C. Lara

Ah, yes! Let us go ahead and buy four different formal dresses that we won’t use again until next year, if at all. That’s money that could’ve gone to a Tatte sandwich or a Felipe’s burrito.

Like bears, college students tend to hibernate and gain weight during winter, meaning that your fun and frilly dress from last summer will be a no-go for formal season. As a college student, you’ll also have to venture a little further for the cute but still affordable clothes out there, since the few clothing stores in Harvard Square don’t exactly offer our idea of a sustainable price point (Anthropology and Ann Taylor, we’re looking at you).

Plus, there’s really no reason to be excited about spending three hours listening to incredibly mediocre music while awkwardly standing around and making accidental eye contact with people from work or who you forgot were in your class. Do you really want to “get low” in front of your comp director? And when the occasional good song does come on, your stomach will probably hurt too much to dance — all thanks to the cold and greasy food you ate beforehand.

Oh, and let’s not forget that you still haven’t started studying for finals. Ask yourself: Is failing your exams really worth the Instagram picture that everyone else is also posting?