At Wesleyan, we do have a multitude of dining options. You can fill up tray after tray at MoCon, dine in style at the Star and Crescent, or grab a slice of pizza or a variety of other greasy but tasty options at the Campus Center. (And I know many, or at least a few people mourn the loss of the esteemed Burrito Bar.) The Red & Black Café is pretty good too, and they even have breakfast. But I’ve gotten to the point where I ask myself, how many more turkey and pesto paninis can I eat? And do I really want to pay 9 points for one?
I don’t understand how the point system works and I know that I am not alone. If you are on the all-points plan, it is simply impossible not to use up all of your points and still eat like a normal person. I don’t know how they estimate the number of points we get per semester, but our current allotment couldn’t even feed an Olsen twin. And I’m not even eating breakfast! WesWings has become my nemesis; I almost never get out of there without dropping at least 12 points and adding about 800 calories to my daily intake. But luckily, the allure of chicken wings has gradually worn off and my attitude has evolved from “Wow, I can’t believe we have such great fast food on campus!” to “How many more weswings can I eat before I wesvomit?
It’s gotten to the point where I have begun to strategize and calculate meals in my head: Let’s see, if I eat lunch today, then I will skip dinner tomorrow and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But wait, I accidentally spent 20 points at Star & Crescent’s steak night…there goes lunch for the next two days. So now lunch is PowerBars, string cheese and Triscuits until Monday. Then, the answer occurred to me—macaroni and cheese!
I found this to be, at first, a most brilliant answer. Macaroni and cheese was the perfect solution to my mealtime woes. It’s cheap, it keeps forever and doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and I can even make it without a microwave. All you have to do is boil some water, add milk and maybe even some butter, and say hello to cheesy goodness.
But after a few nights of Kraft mac and cheese, I couldn’t force myself to rip open another one of the blue boxes and sit down to a meal of neon cheddar sauce coating pasta in the shape of Arthur the Aardvark or Blue, the dog from Nickelodeon’s ”Blue’s Clues.“ I was desperate to save up my points, so I tried to prolong my love affair with such a cheap and simple meal by expanding my horizons and making Annie’s brand macaroni. More options like Alfredo and white cheddar were appealing, but simply not enough.
In the world of collegiate dining, macaroni and cheese has recently plummeted from the A-list to the D-list, Janice Dickinson-style. Blinded by its convenience, I never really looked at the nutrition facts on the side of the aforementioned pasta product. Turns out macaroni and cheese—the key word in that pairing is ”cheese“—balances precariously at the top of the food pyramid rather than at the more nutritional base. Hence, I decided to drag myself to the gym. But I was unprepared for the mass of fellow macaroni-eaters I would find there.
I’ve only been to the gym about a dozen times since the start of the semester (it is at the top of the hill, after all) but I was shocked at how hard it is to get a cardio machine. There is an entire work-out culture of which I was previously unaware: After interrogating the poor victim of the elliptical machine and inquiring as to how many minutes they have left of their self-imposed torture, you can then request to use the machine after them, in hopes that you, too, can sweat buckets and work off that extra bite of cheesy goodness. But the strangest part is that amidst the sea of cardio equipment, there is a vague sense of competition. You aren’t suffering together for a common goal; you are competing for the highly acclaimed position of ”He/She Who Stays on the Longest—Therefore, I Win!“ I swear the second you get off a machine, everyone on the machines around you breathes a sigh of relief, mutters an imperceptible ”Ha!“ while they quicken their pace and congratulate themselves. If I had only known the torment that macaroni and cheese would bring. Maybe I can bring myself to eat one more panini…
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