There’s a lot to accomplish here at Wesleyan. From your academic expectations to your extracurricular hopes and dreams, many of you will have a list of goals to get through before you kick the proverbial Wesleyan bucket. A bucket list, if you will. A lot of us want to be able to receive our diplomas with a sense of accomplishment, knowing that we have achieved all that we set out to get done.

For some of us, those lofty academic and club goals are quickly looking bleaker and bleaker. Thus, we turn to other aims—slightly more realistic ones, that we can still feel good about getting out of the way. For me, those realistic goals come in the form of my Wesleyan Food Bucket List, or WFBL for short. That’s pronounced “wif-ble.” And the list is very important to me.

What follows are my culinary aspirations here at Wes, chock-full of the hopefulness that comes along with trying your best to complete a set of arbitrary objectives. Feel free to let these be your arbitrary objectives, too.

 

1. Get free Star and Crescent

For anyone who doesn’t know, the first three freshmen in line when S&C opens will get their dinner for free—an excellent chance to get some good food at the most reasonable price imaginable. If you’re like me, though, you failed to take advantage of this opportunity in your first year. Would you look at that? We are already starting off with a huge failure. Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy, knowing you and I will never actually complete this list? I take solace knowing that for at least a few of you, there’s still a chance. Take that chance while you still can.

2. Visit every food truck

This is a difficult goal for a number of reasons. First, the trucks seem to change from year to year and semester to semester. Whey and Mamoun’s are pretty easy to knock out, of course, but everything else involves a certain amount of guesswork and trial and error. There was a pizza truck, for instance, that I only saw once in my entire Wesleyan career; the Mexican and crêpe trucks seem to run on a schedule that I can’t quite pin down. Secondly, it is not a great idea to frequent food trucks if you want to hang on to the little bit of extra money you have for textbooks, laundry, or student loans. This may have to be a spaced-out type of goal, and one that changes from “every” to “whichever ones you can find.” Either way, visiting as many food trucks as you can is a worthwhile goal during your Wesleyan tenure.

3. Host a dinner party, where you actually cook and don’t just order pizza

Pretty self-explanatory, don’t you think? Most times I’ve been ambitious enough to try to cook for a group of friends, our nights usually end watching Black Mirror and eating Domino’s. But the times we’ve actually cooked have been super rewarding and fun. This is a heck of a lot easier during junior and senior year, when most of us will have our own kitchens, so be sure to take advantage of that opportunity in order to make the most of your kitchen experience. If you’re living in a dorm, invite your hall! It’s a great way to make friends, and if you can figure out how to cook one or two dishes well, a great way to trick people into thinking you’re talented. Take it from an expert in tricking people into thinking they’re talented.

4. Pails, pails, pails…

The pails over at WesWings are famous for their hangover-breaking capabilities, but there’s a whole lot more to accomplish pail-wise than just ordering one on a Saturday afternoon. Going to Swings for Pail-A-Palooza should be a goal for everybody, as dinner pails really only crop up two or three times a year. Trying new pail creations should certainly also make the list, like the recently debuted “Burrito Pail” (which had a stellar vegetarian option).

5. Become a star

Finally, the bucket-list goal to end all bucket-list goals, and the loftiest objective on this list: having a pail named after you. Is this even possible? I sincerely doubt it. Though there is precedent, this strikes me as a “lightning never strikes twice” type of situation. But hey, you never know. And Swings, I have some ideas. Hit me up.

 

Though this bucket list is by no means exhaustive, take it as inspiration to create your own list of Wesleyan food goals. Create your own WFBL. I won’t be offended, I promise. In a world full of expectations and demands, and with a very scary and very real future fast approaching, it can be good to set a silly list of goals for yourself. It’s more than an artificial sense of accomplishment—it’s a way to get the most out of these four short years at Wesleyan. What better way to carpe diem than by eating our way through Wes? I can’t think of anything better.

 

Spencer Arnold can be reached at sjarnold@wesleyan.edu.