Monday afternoon I was put in front of my class and asked questions regarding a research proposal I barely understood. While my peers seemed to be perfectly engaged in a conversation with the professor (and before my turn arrived), every back-up plan I’ve ever made to get out of such situations kept running through my mind: coughing fit, vomit, diarrhea, bloody nose, crying, vanishing into thin air. But when my turn came, I used the politician’s trick of not answering the question put to me but answering the question I wished would’ve been asked. I suffered through the remainder of the class, surviving yet another seminar without coughing fit, vomit, diarrhea, bloody nose, crying, or vanishing into thin air. Only three more meetings to go.

Here are our Jack-O’-Lanterns for this year: