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Attending a university whose campus barely makes up half of a square mile and whose student population falls just below 3,000 makes it is easy for me to feel as though I’ve seen every face, learned every pattern, and run out of new experiences. But when I shake up my routine, I find that fresh faces and patterns and experiences lie beyond every corner—I just rarely bother to look.

This semester, thanks to my 8:20 on Mondays and Wednesdays, I have started going to breakfast. Breakfast, like the gym or SciLi, had become somewhat of a campus mystery to me. I knew there must have been people who ate before noon and exercised and like fluorescent lighting, but who were they? How didn’t I know them? Here was an entire sector of the University whose schedule was so different from my own that even on a campus as insular as this one, there was little overlap. But alas, University Professor of English Anne Greene (who could never make me go to the gym or study physics) has turned me into a breakfast regular via her early morning course: I now recognize the faces, know the options, can navigate where to sit so as to avoid a crowd.

And along with my increasing familiarity with the friendly faces of Usdan breakfast came an increasing familiarity with the food itself. I have learned that in approaching the breakfast selection, creativity is key. Or if you, like me, have a limit to how many times you can eat the same eggs and toasted bagel, creativity is, in fact, crucial.

My favorite non-egg breakfast to-date is a dish I like to call the Yogurt Supreme, which can be replicated, to your taste, by following the instructions below:

• Grab a clean black plastic bowl, usually located next to the yogurt or oatmeal or cereal. Help yourself to a healthy serving of plain yogurt—I like to give myself two scoops.
• Head to the end of Vegan, where the peanut butter, almond butter and sun-nut butter lie waiting for you. Take a scoop of the nut butter of your choice and dollop it into your yogurt. It may sound weird, but I promise it’s delicious.
• Head to the cluster of jars situated to the left of the toasting station. Here you can dress your yogurt to your heart’s desire. I usually add granola (which is actually just a bunch of crushed Nature Valley bars—Bon Ap gets points for creativity), dried cranberries, banana chips, and sometimes chia seeds. If you’re not a fan of the pseudo-granola offered to you at this station, you can use cereal instead to give your creation a little crunch.
• Next, I like to add some sort of fruit. If there are blueberries set out next to oatmeal, I will usually spoon some in my bowl, but this luxury tends to be relegated to brunch. If there are bananas waiting for you at the end of the hall, you can grab one and slice it into your dish to your heart’s content.
• Enjoy your Yogurt Supreme, a delightful combination of Usdan’s odds and ends!

Sasha Cohen can be reached at srcohen@wesleyan.edu.