# All About Fall Fest

**Source**: https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/owen/2024/10/25/all-about-fall-fest
**Parent**: https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/category/residential-colleges

by [Owen](https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/1637 "Owen") in

[#At Home, At Yale](https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/category/at-home-at-yale "#At Home, At Yale"), [#Campus Life](https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/category/campus-life "#Campus Life"), [#New Haven](https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/category/new-haven "#New Haven"), [#Residential Colleges](https://admissions.yale.edu/bulldogs-blogs/category/residential-colleges "#Residential Colleges")
on 10.25.2024

New Haven fall is so sublimely picturesque, I still cannot believe it is real. The way that brisk winds dance through campus walkways and side streets, bringing down with them a trickle of leaves. The way that pumpkins arrive outside every entryway, instantaneously. It is a real deciduous heaven: change so metamorphic and transient that half the battle is learning to love something fleeting. To grapple with the paradox of finite perfectibility. To live in change, a parable for the college experience itself. It is an experience of much more metaphysical import than feeling like you’re finally (!) living that Gilmore Girls Yale experience you’ve craved since getting in (although that’s satisfying enough for me).

The annual sights and smells of New England autumn – falling leaves, apple stems, cinnamon – mix with the perennial sights and smells of Yale life: coffee breath, tired students, a cramped hand from an econ problem set you submitted at 3 AM. Nothing represents this marriage more than Fall Fest, an annual celebration hosted by Yale Hospitality on Old Campus, where students gather to eat various foods and partake in fun activities to welcome autumn. And just in time, too: usually hosted at the end of the last week before fall break, Fall Fest stands as a necessary study break and opportunity to finally experience that New Haven fall you’ve missed out on because you spent the previous three consecutive days in the basement of Sterling Memorial Library studying game theory.

Representatives from each residential college serve unique autumnal treats. This year’s spread included apple cider and stewed apples from Jonathan Edwards College, pierogies from Morse College (the best college, my college), vegan crab cakes from Branford College. To boot, there was a band of live music, carnival games (from ring-the-bell to foam “ax” throwing), and piles of pumpkins yours for the taking. I’ve yet to see someone competently carve a Handsome Dan Jack-O-Lantern. Yes, that is a challenge.

Toting a bag of honeycrisp apples and with a stomach full of churros, Fall Fest is all you need to reinvigorate that brain of yours to crush the final stretch of midterms. So, on behalf of all Yale students: thank you, Yale Hospitality. And welcome fall!