Let me paint a picture for you…
A campus that was once alive with bright young people has slowly eroded into a gray, cold, ghost town. This is finals week.
Okay, I’ll confess; I’m being dramatic. HOWEVER, finals week is upon us, and the campus is quiet. When I leave my dorm, there is this air of intensity. The weather isn’t helping either. After a relatively warm fall season, the stormy gray sky and the cold is abhorrent. Not that I ‘ve left my dorm much to examine the sky. My roommate studies in the library, so I just stay in the dorm. Yesterday, my day consisted of studying, napping, and watching The Office. I finally left my dorm to grab an egg sandwich from Cool Beans, then came back to my dorm to eat and continue studying.
Important questions to ask yourself during Finals week.
Going to Cool Beans for an egg sandwich is pretty much what is keeping me going. I learned that Cool Beans offers egg sandwiches all day. This is basically the best news I had ever heard. I mean, I could get an egg sandwich at midnight if I wanted too! I also had to spend my dining dollars, so this was a delicious way to satisfy my breakfast cravings and deplete my account.
I think it is specific to the Holy Cross culture that at the end of the semester, everyone is trying to spend all of their dining dollars. I have worked in the lobby shop on campus this week and the amount of food people grab just to spend their extra dollars is insane. Let me break it down for you:
Everyone on campus has a meal plan. The most basic plan, and the one most freshmen get, is unlimited swipes at Kimball and $425 to spend at Coolbeans, Lower Kimball, and the Lobby Shop. So, for freshmen, it’s not that hard to get rid of your doing dollars throughout the semester. However, upper classmen who live off campus or in apartments have different meal plans, consisting of a couple swipes at Kimball a week, and like, $1o00 dining dollars [I think this is accurate; I have not studied the meal plan]. Here’s the catch: the dining dollars do not roll over into the next semester. So if you have money left over, it’s gone for good.
So as a sat at the cashier desk, ringing up 5 bags of chips, 3 pints of ice cream, soda, smoothies, candy, donuts, peanut butter, and canned goods, I would wait in amusement as seniors eyes would bug out of their heads and they would say “I only spent $85 dining dollars! What am I going to do with the remaining $250??” Sometimes people would get creative, giving their card to friends to spend, or buying food for everyone in line.
It was really great to see such positivity during such a gloomy and stressful week. I am really looking forward to the Holidays, seeing my hometown friends and family and sleeping a lot.
Thanks for the love, Ryan
Well, I’m going to eat an egg sandwich.
Happy New Year!
