Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Do you remember what you had for dinner yesterday? Do you remember who you had that meal with? I have a feeling that often we will answer "no" to the former question, but "yes" to the latter. And I think this shows that in this culture, having a meal is mostly a social event; the fact that we are engaging in the biomechanical act of eating is almost incidental to the fact that we are doing so in the company of friends and family. Meals are supposed to be the half an hour or so that you put aside to catch up with the people around you.
I sometimes think along those lines as I am eating lunch by myself, seating in my usual seat next to the windows in Oakenshields dining hall. Even though meals were supposed to be social events, I have had a total of two meals in the company of friends during the past two months, and looking around in the dining hall, I don't believe that my experience is in any way singular. On any given day, perhaps one-third of the diners at Oakenshields are sitting by themselves, hurriedly gobbling down their food while putting the last touches on their homework sets or finishing the reading for their next class. After lunch we run off to our classes, then the library, and if dinner happens at all it will be alone over some more homework, and the most important thing about the meal will be that it does not end up on our homework.
It seems ironic to me that the typical college student's lifestyle is in such contrast to what we usually take to be important. I suppose going to school is important but I'm not sure when it began to take precedence over being there for the people around me such as friends and family, when it became more important to finish that homework set than to have a decent meal with close friends. And observing those around me, as I always do, I get the vague feeling that I'm not the only one who has been making this kind of trade-off during college.
I sometimes think along those lines as I am eating lunch by myself, seating in my usual seat next to the windows in Oakenshields dining hall. Even though meals were supposed to be social events, I have had a total of two meals in the company of friends during the past two months, and looking around in the dining hall, I don't believe that my experience is in any way singular. On any given day, perhaps one-third of the diners at Oakenshields are sitting by themselves, hurriedly gobbling down their food while putting the last touches on their homework sets or finishing the reading for their next class. After lunch we run off to our classes, then the library, and if dinner happens at all it will be alone over some more homework, and the most important thing about the meal will be that it does not end up on our homework.
It seems ironic to me that the typical college student's lifestyle is in such contrast to what we usually take to be important. I suppose going to school is important but I'm not sure when it began to take precedence over being there for the people around me such as friends and family, when it became more important to finish that homework set than to have a decent meal with close friends. And observing those around me, as I always do, I get the vague feeling that I'm not the only one who has been making this kind of trade-off during college.
