Dining Hall roulette: the gamble of every meal

There are a lot of uncertainties in college. What you’re doing after graduation. Whether you actually understand anything in your classes. If you passed your exams. But there’s one uncertainty that somehow feels just as stressful on a daily basis — what’s waiting for you in the dining hall.

Every day, students at Augie walk into the dining hall for breakfast, lunch and dinner with hunger and anticipation to see if their favorite meal is being served. We look up from the bottom of the stairs as we try to catch a glimpse of what’s waiting for us. 

It’s not that the food is always bad. In fact, it’s usually pretty good. What makes the dining hall so exhilarating is that you genuinely never know what you’re going to get. Some days you win, and some days you end up eating cereal for dinner. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a personal favorite. 

There are good moments when everything just works. The pasta hits the spot, the pizza makes your stomach rumble, or the dessert table has something other than cookies, even if they’re good. On those days, you almost forget the let down of past meals. You sit down with your friends, and for a second, you are excited to eat. 

But those days are not always common.

Most of the time, it’s a careful process. You walk around once…maybe twice. You pretend like you’re just looking, but really, you’re calculating your options like your life depends on it. Do you risk the mystery meat? Do you trust the one dish that looks decent but could easily not be? Or do you play it safe and go for the salad at Simple Serving, even though you know it won’t fill you up entirely? 

It’s not even just about the food: it’s the tough choice of having to decide. After a full day of classes, practices and meetings, the last thing you want is to make another decision. 

And yet, here you are, standing in the dining hall, questioning the options in front of you. Sometimes I end up copying my friend's plate because I’m too indecisive to pick. 

But the dining hall is also where expectations go to be humbled. You walk in starving, dreaming about a full meal, and somehow you leave with a plate of random sides that don’t quite go together. Pasta next to fries next to some type of vegetable that you took because it seemed like the best option at the time.

And somehow, everyone understands this as you all sit and analyze your plates. You find a table in the cramped space of the Ordal Dining Hall with your friends. No one asks too many questions about what’s on each other’s plates. They just ask if it’s good. No one judges when someone goes back for cereal as their main course. We’ve all been there. I know I have — one too many times. 

Dining hall roulette isn’t just about food. It’s about putting together what you think might be a good dinner. I like to think of it as an art. It’s about finding small wins, like when the drink machine is actually in order or when you build a course of something that tastes better than expected. That’s when you see your art pull through.

At the end of the day though, the dining hall is part of the college experience, whether we like it or not. It brings people together, even if it’s just to complain or compare plates. 

No matter if the food is good or bad, my favorite part is talking with friends at the table. Honestly, maybe that’s the point — because even on the worst food days, at least you’re still eating with your friends. 

Still, it would be nice to win the roulette a little more often.