Mindscape

Meal Plan

Hi, I'm up late again, and I had a thought, and now I'm sharing the thought with you. I promise it's not bad this time.

So at my college there's a cafeteria. It's pretty dang nice compared to pretty much every other cafeteria in the state since we have the best culinary program in the state (I'm pretty sure) and the school will hire culinary majors to work there.

But that aside, to eat in the cafeteria as a student you have to pay for a meal plan. They have a few different packages with three options each. You get so many meals per week and some "munch money," which is money preloaded onto the student card that you can use at the different food places on campus (and a few off campus fast food places too, Wendy's has saved me on more than one occasion after the caf closed before I could eat). All the campus food places are closed on weekends though, which is a bummer.

I've had the meal plan where there's three meal a day for seven days a week, and the set amount of munch money. I tend to skip breakfast (a horrible practice, I know, it's the most important meal of the day, yada yada) and only eat twice a day, and later in the semester I tend to only go to the caf on weekends if I have nothing to eat in my dorm. This year I decided to change my plan to the option that includes two meals a day, none on weekends, but with more munch money.

So I'm laying in bed, fifteen minutes until 1 am, and I get to thinking, "That doesn't make any sense!" If you live in the dorm they make you buy a meal plan, and you pay for that plan no matter if you eat or not, which is messed up! And to get into the caf, they make you swipe your card to access the money, so they keep a tally on how many meals you've used to make sure you don't go over what your plan states. If they keep a tally of how many meals you use, then why not just let people eat however many times they want, add up the tally at the end of the semester, and make them pay then so that if I'm broke (which I am) and can't get groceries to feed myself on the weekend, I can just go to the caf and not worry about starving until Monday.

I shouldn't have to choose between wasting my money on meals I'm not gonna use (they don't even roll over into the next semester) and possibly not eating on weekends. I'm this close to an aneurysm because I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to fit enough food in a to-go box to last me two days. Like bruh. Are they gonna let me bring in a second Tupperware along with my to-go box? Can I buy two boxes? Will they let me eat a regular meal and get stuff to go? Am I gonna have to sneak food out using a second Tupperware if they don't let me use if freely? So many questions man!