October is a special month to the students at Graded. While walking down the hallways of our school during this month, one notices a common thread connecting the high school students. They all look lanky, worn-out, and speak in short yet deep grunts. This strange behavior does not go unnoticed, as October became known as “the month of the living dead.”

In the early stages, almost no one can notice the difference between a contaminated student and a healthy student. Both of them live their school lives normally and go home feeling tired after all the hard work. However, the differences start to surface when they come back the next day. While a healthy student would get to class feeling at least a tad well rested, the infected one would greet their peers with a faint, purple-like color under their eyes. Yawning is also more common.

As the month progresses, so do the symptoms. Students start arriving later to school and begin to lose their ability to form words, substituting a mixture of sounds and hand signals. The previously mentioned purple-like color under their eyes  develops into a full blown dark circle that causes the student’s eyelids to stay half closed.

Some events in October were shown to directly contribute to the development of this disease. One of them is the reassessments that are given throughout the month. Thanks to such tests, it has been proven that students who take them are almost always guaranteed to have their symptoms advanced from mild to intense stages in only one night. Another factor that helps progress the sickness is the infamous PSAT, a test that worsens the health of students profoundly due to the many days devoted to studying for it and the amount of energy needed to complete it.

Even though living deadness is a serious problem, it is cured automatically by the time Wacky Week and Halloween arrive. By Friday, the most significant trace of “undeadness” seen in the hallways comes simply from the ghoulish costumes that cured students wear to celebrate the event that is Halloween. However, there are still students with the disease on October 31st. They can be seen all around school, but they are mostly concentrated in the A wing since that’s where their lockers and court are located. The sad truth is that, for some seniors, the disease still persists until November 5th, when the SAT finally puts an end to their condition.