Nothing says back to school like a school dance proposal for an event that’s still six weeks away. Apparently, the school year can’t officially start until someone drags out the poster board and rings your doorbell in the middle of the night.
Homecoming proposals which used to take place towards the end of August or beginning of September have now turned into an August tradition, turning the start of the school year into a bizarre competition of who asks first and who gets asked first.
Forget warming up to the idea of social hierarchy again, and get used to waking up with a flooded stream of Snap stories showing off Hoco posters.
The strangest part is how unnecessary the urgency feels. This dance isn’t until mid September, yet the pressure to ask has somehow been pushed into August. Students who didn’t get asked immediately were anxious they wouldn’t be asked at all. Locking down a date before school even begins is a great way to ease into a new school year. At this point it’s less about the dance and more about staking a claim early or calling dibs.
And with the rush comes the pressure. Once the first posters were dropped off it felt like a chain reaction of panic. Suddenly if you weren’t asked before the first day of school you were somehow left questioning if a month was long enough to find a date. It’s hard to enjoy the excitement of dances when it feels like a deadline. Instead of a fun tradition it’s beginning to lean towards another thing to stress about. Nothing like a scavenger hunt for validation to kick off the new year.
Then there’s the asking itself. Huge posters, candy, and cringey punchlines. Some of it is exciting and fun, but not when it turns into a social competition with a tight deadline. It feels like the focus is shifting from the dance to the proposal. Whether it’s how early you do it, how you do it, or who you do it to, subtly it’s all turned into a way for people to prove themselves.
By the time Homecoming actually arrives we will have spent a month and a half stressing about this dance. It’s safe to say the excitement will be gone and replaced with a slow buildup to a dance that was clearly the afterthought.
