Duke's Halloween horror show

While haunted houses, ghouls lurking in shadows and witches flying in windows may have been our childhood horrors and the themes of our dreams and Halloween costumes, by Wednesday night here at Duke these nightmares may have evolved into more realistic terrors: anthrax, the Taliban and the job market for seniors.

The Bill Gates heads had sold out at Halloween Zone, and there was only one Bush mask left. Boys were opting for fatigues and commando costumes, and girls were trying to decide between Sexy Grown Up Bunny costumes and black patent leather female cop outfits for the dominatrix at heart. Me? I couldn't decide.

I had one friend who dressed up last year as a Freudian slip with the word "Ego" written on it. I had taped cereal boxes to myself and carried a toy machine gun. As baffled students started to pick up my fallen Fruit Loops and Coco Puffs at George's, I realized that being a cereal killer hadn't been as clever as I thought it was. So I figured that it might inspire me to find a relevant and witty costume for Halloween 2001 if I could imagine a truly contemporary Duke House of Horrors tour: You're a senior, you don't have a clue how you're going to make a living eight months from now, the job market is slow, corporations are laying off people right and left, you're about to be late for your I-banking interview at the Career Center, and you're pulling into the parking lot.

You enter the Blue Zone, and see a spot right away. You start to pull in when another car pulls in right in front of you. Flustered, you move on and see another one. You pull in and oops, it's not a spot, but a half-spot, with one of those diagonal lines on the corner that cost $60 a ticket when you're caught. You move on to the next lot and see a row of empty spaces, 20, no 30. You smile in relief, only to come up to the row and see that they're all handicapped! Finally, you realize that the dirt lot is your best bet. You pull up to the lot and slow down as another car speeds around the turn on Duke University Drive and side swipes your mirror. You take a right and blow out the bottom of your car on the uneven terrain. Once you finally bungle over the rocks and ditches, you find a tiny opening in between two Tahoes in the back. You start to turn in, but ah! Your wheels won't move anymore; you're stuck in the mud and can't stop spinning. You sit there for about half an hour until finally you give up and try to forget the fact that you've boxed two huge cars in the lot.

Another half an hour later, you finally arrive on West Campus, and immediately, leaf blowers accost you, and a gale of leaves blow you backward and get stuck in your hair. But you persevere, when, suddenly, you spot a train of freshman girls on their 15th lap from East to West. You look around you and see all the girls wearing full make up, prom dresses and stilettos, sequins and gold. Every boy has a briefcase and is off to an interview with that company where you forgot to drop your rZsumZ! You rush to find a computer cluster and on the way see all of the professors whose classes you've cut, all the people with whom you have the dreaded, "Hi, how are you?" pseudo-conversation, and now you've started entering the darkest part of the Duke Campus of Horrors.

In front of each computer in the cluster are hundreds of eager beavers, all typing cover letters fervently and visiting rZsumZ workshop sites enthusiastically. You see a free spot--it's frozen. Another--frozen--and another! Finally, one free screen glows in the distance--aha! But, no! It's a Unix computer, for engineers only. Dejected, you leave and head toward the bleakest corridor: the Career Center, for your I-banking interview.

So far on-campus recruiting has been a lethal mix of sorority rush and fraternity pledging. Everyone dresses up in the same outfits, puts on their most winning smile and goes out to join the right group and get the right status; except with interviews, there are no kegs or section parties. It all started at the career fair, where you dressed up in your navy suit, brought 50 resumes and spent the whole morning wondering in the back of your head why you worked in retail that summer rather than starting at J.P. Morgan at age 12. Wasn't there someone in your 8th grade class whose father was the CEO of Goldman Sachs until 1975?

Should've been nicer to him--too bad. Now you're stuck in this glorified meat market, nervously waiting, fidgeting with your fingers, smoothing back your hair, all to answer questions like, "How many ping-pong balls fit into a New York subway car?" and, "How many pay phones are in New York City?" Once you pull these answers out of thin air you become a human computer once again, shooting back your SAT scores, your GPA and analyses of your highest and lowest grades. "Why did you get an A- in this class?" and "why are you getting higher grades in cognitive classes?" are leading questions in this stimulating and exciting conversation.