When you are a child, a lot of things excite you. From birthdays to new friends to puppies, it seems like children are always able to find some bit of positivity and happiness in everything. Throw in a new costume and candy, and you have one crazy, sugared-up, excited child.

Halloween as a kid was always one of the most fun and thrilling days of the year. It is a day where you get to dress up as the princess or superhero you know yourself to be at heart and go knocking at stranger’s doors accepting the candy they are giving you. Additionally, Halloween is that magical night in which mom and dad all of a sudden seem to not care anymore about sugar intake, despite how much craziness is about to ensue because of it.

“The best part of Halloween for me was dressing up and going out with all my friends to collect candy,” said Christine Provencher, a Fort Collins resident. “Afterwards, we would compare candy to see who got the most and the best, and then we’d just pig out until we felt like we were going to throw up.”

Watching a child on Halloween is pure happiness and innocence. Despite how heavy their bags get with candy, or how far past their bedtimes it is, there is nothing but joy within their hearts for the fact that this is a wonderful night.

As we leave childhood in the dust and begin to grow up, however, the very definition of Halloween changes. We reach an age where dressing up is not as cool anymore, holding mommy’s hand walking down the street is repulsing and though deep down we still all want to trick-or-treat, we are simply too old to be able to get away with it.

So what is one to do on Halloween if not trick-or-treat and eat their weight in candy? Party and drink their weight in alcohol. Or, at least that seems to be the most widely known college expectation for Halloween.

Provencher said that Halloween has become “an excuse to party in as minimal amount of clothing as possible and not get judged for it.”

In college, a lot of it is all about the partying, and the innocence that we grew up with in Halloween is taken away. Now, instead of competing to see who has collected the most candy, it is who can throw the best party, who can get the most wasted without passing out or who has the least cliché of the slutty costumes.

This is not to say, however, that all college students have to go out and get trashed or have to dress inappropriately just because it is Halloween. There are some students that are not all about the party scene and prefer to do things a little bit differently.

Regardless of what you prefer to do with your Halloween now as an adult, there is no doubt that things have changed since you were a little one. Even though the evolution of Halloween from childhood to now gets a generally positive reaction, there is something a little bittersweet about it; and, there is no one to say whether one version of Halloween is better than the other because they are both fun and exciting. What most people can agree on, though, is that they are both just undeniably different.