It’s 6:12 pm, and you just finished your day’s last class. The only food you’ve eaten since this morning (if 12:30 counts as morning) is two Clif bars and a bacon, egg, and cheese from Starbucks, so you’re desperately hoping for at least a somewhat edible menu at the dining hall. After you make the fifteen-minute trek back to your dorm, you’re met with an ungodly long line to get into the dining hall, which only means ungodly lines for food as well. Once you finally get inside – it’s not that hard to scan your damn card – you make the rounds to check out your possible options for “dinner” tonight.
Raw chicken? Pass. Vegan meatloaf? Not sure how that’s even possible. Black bean burger? The dining hall beef is a one-way ticket to food poisoning so no shot anyone is touching that. After about three-and-a-half loops around the food court, praying that the food will miraculously change with each lap, you settle for some overdone pasta and clearly microwaved meatballs. Now that you have your food, the real challenge begins; where are you gonna sit? It’s amazing that the dining hall consistently never has open tables to sit at, and you’d prefer not to sit next to the kid wearing a Minecraft t-shirt eating a raw potato. You scour and scour until at last, a seat opens up. You snatch it up immediately and start eating your now lukewarm pasta while scrolling through your For You Page on TikTok. By the time you finish eating, it’s already 7:45 pm and you start to head back up to your dorm room to finish up some homework when you get the “DoorDash?” text in the group chat. How could one refuse? Two spicy Chick-fil-A sandwiches later you pass out in your bed and dream of your next trip to the dining hall tomorrow morning.
