Simkin: Balancing food and thought

So you’re back from winter break and have survived the first week of term — more or less…. So you’re back from winter break and have survived the first week of term — more or less. You know what you have to do to shoulder your academic course load, although whether you choose to do it is up to you. But all is not entirely set for the semester.

Look at your schedule. Whether you can get across campus to be in the appropriate classrooms at the right times is not the concern of this column — sprint! — instead, the question of the day is: Did you factor in time to eat?

I’m not talking about time to prepare gourmet meals or even grocery shop on a regular basis — there are all kinds of time-saving tricks out there to make food acquisition and preparation manageable for even the student with the most hectic agenda. It is, however, all too possible to create a schedule in which, on some days, you literally do not have time for more than a granola bar.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, all is not lost — add-drop doesn’t end until Tuesday, Jan.  18, so you’ve still got some time to do a cost-benefit analysis of whether only being able to eat every other day is worth knocking out all those credits. Ask yourself: Are different sections of the courses you need offered at other, more feasible timeslots? Did you build everything around avoiding classes on Friday at the cost of 10 solid booked hours on Mondays and Wednesdays? Was that really the exercise of sound reasoning?

Night classes can be great for freeing up time for eating — you’ve got all day for breakfast, brunch, lunch, snacking — but too many will burn you out and leave you unavailable for the all-important dinner time slot.

This is not only injurious to a three-meal-a-day diet at reasonable times, but can be tremendously damaging to your social life as well. I took three night classes last semester, and do you know how often I got to see all the friends who were meeting up for dinner without me? Rarely.

So, if classes are preventing you from eating, why not just eat while you’re in class? Sorry, that’s not an endorsable solution either. It isn’t going to get you a detention like it might have in high school, but some professors are agitated by it and some classrooms outright forbid it (The Cathedral is a historical landmark people! You can’t be sloshing soft drinks and crumbs all over it!).

And of course, how well can you really take notes or participate when distracted with snacking? Maybe you’re more talented than I am, but I can’t type with one hand while eating an apple if I want my notes to be remotely decipherable.

So is just skipping meals viable? No, no it is not. When you’re hungry you might find that you physically cannot concentrate — not a terrific thing for any would-be student. Furthermore, if your classmates can’t hear the lecture over the sound of your stomach growling, that’s no way to make friends, let alone get into a study group. Also, hungry people can be grouchy people, and irritability gets you nowhere.

Ultimately, there’s sometimes no way to get around taking a certain class at a certain time, and work hours may or may not be negotiable. What can you do if you’re stuck with them? Eat a solid breakfast and make something quick and easy when you get home. Keeping an emergency granola or protein bar in your backpack is not a bad idea either. However, keeping fruit in your backpack that you will inevitably forget about is a bad idea — trust me.