College Dining Hall Hacks
Disclaimer: this is more for freshman that happen to be browsing the OSU Dance websites page. Or whoever on campus needs some hacks so they don't use all their swipes in 2 days.
Living on campus for the first year is daunting and very confusing. I didn't figure out how my meal plan worked until a month after I started and by then half of my extra cash on my card was gone because I was using it unnecessarily. So first tip before reading this: try to get a good understanding of meal plans and how they work. Ask around, google, whatever you like. Just know it makes things a lot easier. Another tip: always make sure you're filling up your swipe amount. A sandwich might be $5 but you have a swipe for $8 and you can add on some extra food to that swipe. Doesn't matter if you're hungry for it at this very moment, I guarantee you that the extra granola bar you bought with your extra swipe money will come in handy as you rush out of the door to your 8 am and have 0% time to go all the way over to the closest dining hall.
Being a vegetarian and conscious about your food decisions can make it difficult to find food that makes you happy to eat and feel good afterwards. A lot of the dining hall foods are fried or filled with sugar (depending on where you go). Sometimes you just want pineapple to go with the extra yogurt you have upstairs and using a whole swipe can impact the rest of your meals for the week. Especially if you're dumb like me and got the lowest amount of swipes per week on my card.
To avoid wasting a whole swipe here is what you do. My school (The Ohio State University) has these cups called "MyCups" that you get for free at the beginning of the year. With these you can go to any C store or dining hall and fill it up. At the C stores you get 10 free swipes but what people never remember is that you can refill your cup at any dining hall for FREE! This means a whole container of free soy milk, juice, lemon water, hot water for tea, etc. I would go in and get soy milk for my smoothies and cereal or lemon water to drink in the mornings. So this is great, free beverages that you don't have to bike to target to get.
So, lets bend the rules a little. (Because lets face it, the college doesn't need any more of your money than it already has, especially when it comes to just getting pineapples from the dinning halls). Use your MyCup to get other food substances. I like to pretend I am getting something to drink but really filling the entire bottle up with fresh fruit. Smart right?
Lets push the envelope a little more. (Another tip for you: buy mason jars. You can cook with them and store things in them. They're very convenient, simple, and all the lids fit on whatever kind you buy.) Get your purse, preferably because it allows for easy access, and put however many mason jars you want in it. Take your MyCup and go into the dining hall to say "I would like to fill this up". Fill up the MyCup with whatever you need and take a detour over to the salad bar. Take out a mason jar and fill it up with spinach. Take out another one and fill it with fruit. Tada! You have all the ingredients for a green smoothie for free!
Also, that "take only 1 piece of fruit" rule means nothing to me. I refuse to use an entire swipe for 1 banana. This is when the "to go boxes" come in handy! But for these you actually need to use a swipe. Sometimes I like to play a game with myself called "how many bananas can we fit in this box along with some other things to last me until Wednesday?" I think you get the gist of how this one works.
Do this to a certain extent. I don't go in and take full meals because that is how you get caught. Although, I have seen a kid steal a whole pound cake from the desserts section so security obviously isn't that tight. But feel free to use whatever combination of these you like in the halls.
