Personal reflection on the Change in season

Fall is, in fact, not my favorite season.

I don’t believe my love for summer has ever been a secret – sunny, hot days, lack of

homework, flexible schedules, the fact that everyone feels more adventurous between June and September. I could go on.

While we all wish we could live with endless lake days, late night ice cream runs, and lack of snow boots and coats, fall has its advantages.

By early September, I typically feel ready to return to a more stable schedule. I’m a person who thrives on planning and organizing. While I love the freedom of summer, sometimes it’s just pleasant to settle down into a routine and break out my good old, reliable agenda book to write down every piece of homework from your syllabus for the next four months. Nerdy, I know, but it’s reassuring to look ahead and know what to expect and when to expect it.

With that being said, I could very much go without the cooler weather that I know is coming. I don’t mind a reasonable twenty degrees outside, but once we drop past ten below, that’s where I begin to feel impatient for spring. I know it’s a long way out from now (at least I hope so!), but that’s what the rapidly cooling autumn temperatures remind me of: what we have just around the corner. 

Now, I’m going to back track a bit and say that the benefits of losing heat and humidity include being able to jump off the treadmill and onto the sidewalk for a good, long run and to soak up the last few pleasant-weather weeks without dying of heat exhaustion. 

My other personal favorite is, however much I love wearing summer clothes, jeans are holding onto first place for my favorite clothing item. They match everything, they’re comfortable, and (where are my girls at?) they will typically have larger pockets than shorts. After picking up some new jeans before the new semester began, I could hardly wait to slip back into long pants! 

A huge drawback, and a personal grudge I hold against dropping temperatures, is the loss of flowers. It’s inevitable, I know, but my garden is my happy spot. Seriously. Put me anywhere around plants, and I will be the most excited person on the planet for hours. I hate when the frost comes and it’s time to bid the flowers good-bye until May. In that sense, I am looking forward to the horticulture class I am taking this semester, so even if the gardens are turning brown, I can at least build up some botany know-how for the next growing season. 

However, I can also thank the cold for killing the bugs. Especially spiders. 

I can take bugs pretty well, if I do say so myself. Growing up, myself, my siblings, and the neighbor kids would keep crickets and slugs and such as pets, and my tolerance level is still pretty high for creepy crawlies. But let’s just say that I prefer all bugs outside, and as for spiders, I know they’re important for pest control and whatnot, but I still would rather never see a spider, indoors or outside.

I probably shouldn’t write an article about fall and not include the food. Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of cozy-weather food. I would prefer to eat fruit and ice cream all year long. I still do, but people get picky about eating watermelon in December I guess.

Pumpkin pie? Yes. Fresh apples? All year long! There ends my list of fall goodies. I’m not a foodie, but I know that most people fall in line for apple cider, pumpkin spice, and Halloween candy. 

My other drawback, and probably the biggest one I have, is Halloween. I know I’m throwing out an extremely unpopular opinion when I saw that Halloween is easily my least-favorite holiday. I’m sorry, but, as a Christian, I can’t get behind a celebration of death and spookiness. Christianity is a celebration of eternal life in Christ Jesus and skeletons are the exact opposite of life.

Fall, the precursor to winter. Fall, the start of homework, routines, loss of sunlight, and cozy jackets (not to mention allergy season)

 That being said, you can find me camped out on the couch to watch Charlie Brown and going to bed early. Thus ends my October 31st.

The best part of Halloween is that November arrives in the morning. November brings the official Thanksgiving and Christmas season, when I don’t care if it snows or not, when Christmas carols and turkey are welcome, and we can still find a few last warm days if our climate is merciful. 

Fall, the precursor to winter. Fall, the start of homework, routines, loss of sunlight, and cozy jackets (not to mention allergy season). I know for those who dislike the heat and love the spooky season, this is their favorite time of year, but while I fall short on both those counts, I still appreciate several other aspects of the autumn time of year. I can’t say that I’m not excited for fall, but I am already missing summer at this time.