New semester, old foraging strategy

This year (which is to say, this academic year, since my life revolves around the academic rather than Gregorian calendar), I have a cubicle in the grad student office in the department building. My cube, it is a great cube. True, other cubes have many books in them to demonstrate their inhabitants' substantial erudition or concern for the appearance thereof (Exhibit A), while my cube (Exhibit B) lacks most decorative embellishments, but at least allows one to LEARN TO READ LATIN, or so the title claims. But it's a comfortable cube, furnished with all the infrastructural necessities of grad school: reading lights, an outlet, and a chair.

Comparative cubicle study

Exhibit A: This are a serious cube.

Exhibit B: This are my cube.

During the semester, I live in this cube. (Not pictured: the office futon, for the sleeping part of living.) But where one lives, one must also eat, and it's best when lodging includes meals. Fortunately, in the subfields of political science that aren't my own, people evidently have very large budgets and are always putting on extremely fascinating scholarly events that I alas cannot attend (schedule constraints!) but whose catering I always seem to have time for.

So last semester, I developed a foraging strategy whereby every weekday I could obtain free lunch. This involved a spreadsheet with the days, times, and locations of all weekly poli sci events, culled from various advertisements and forwarded emails from fascinating groups like the Center for the Quantitative Analysis of Minor Latin American Electoral Trends, along with a two-hour delay figured in for the time that must elapse between primary eater (event attendees) food access and secondary eater (me) access. However, a logistical dilemma often arises as a result of primary eater enthusiasm--namely, all the plates and forks are gone by the time that secondary eaters arrive. So, I also stockpiled disposable flatwear and dishes in my cube for enhanced foraging productivity. (Those who overlooked this step are reduced to putting their pad thai in paper cups.) A friend also introduced me to the American Politics coffee room, where fresh coffee with fresh milk live for even non-Americanists to take, at least while their purveyors' office doors are closed.

So I thought I was pretty well-covered last semester for food. Dinner was of course a problem, but one that could often be solved by eating twice as much pad thai for lunch. Then, today, two days shy of the new semester, I discovered a place called the second floor refrigerator. Apparently, this is where catering leftovers are stored! (Typically, I compete with other department scavengers to ensure that there is nothing to store.) Maybe these foods are from secret events not yet registered in my spreadsheet? Or non-recurring events? In any case, they seem not to be left out for secondary eaters. But they cannot be kept from enterprising and committed scavengers! So, this morning, I had a delicious piece of fruit tart for breakfast, compliments of my new friend, second floor refrigerator.

I mentioned this strategy to one of my professors last semester, and he looked at me as if to suggest, "If you were more prudent, you would keep your gauche habits to yourself." One day, I hope, I too will look back on these times and think them unclassy. On the other hand, I can't imagine ever wanting to actually pay for lunch, so maybe I will just be the person slinking by the pad thai troughs more guiltily in the future.