The Dining Hall

In two hours they will be shitting their pants

Chances are your parents will be conned into buying you a meal plan during orientation by some spunky blond who goes on about the healthy food choices and diverse menus. It's all lies, and you'll be eating it three times a day for the next semester or until you get sick of it and just starting taking your meals at Moe's Southwest.

A Regrettable Feast

The food will be decent initially. In fact, it might even be good. But come mid-October you will wish your parents had given you that $1,500 to spend on Papa John's and Lunchables.

The pamphlets can scream organic fresh vegetables all they want, but more likely than not your food comes from Aramark or some other soulless food giant. When you sign up for a $7.59 all-you-can-eat buffet designed to feed several thousand students a day, you get what you pay for: pizza, pizza, and more pizza. Oh and taco night. There's a vegan-friendly corner? Enjoy eating mushroom burgers 6 out of 7 nights of the week, because these culinary geniuses only know how to make meatloaf and easy mac.

Any food worth eating will instantly result in a fifty-person line, and after you wait 15 minutes and notice the pork roast is getting kinda thin, you will give up and just go make yourself a PB&J.

Culinary Indifference

The staff will be a motley crew of fellow students and ex-McDonald's employees, neither of which knows how to cook. Your food will be burnt, undercooked, and drowned in spices to make up for its prepackaged blandness. And God forbid one of them should forget to wash their hands, because you just might vomit 11 times in twenty-four hours thanks to what the Student Health Center doctor called "food poisoning from fecal fluids".

Expect a revolving door of cooks and cleaning staff, because no one stays there long. If you're a guy there will likely be a smoking hot Spanish girl on staff who you ogle with your buddies and fantasize about rescuing from her $8 an hour job - that is, until she brings her three year-old to work.

Takeout

On the upside, you will get to see the curious sight of students stealing food they already paid for, employing simultaneously the most ingenious and ridiculous methods. We're talking about stuffing chicken nuggets into hoodies, "accidentally" knocking raw vegetables and entire loafs of bread into open backpacks, and squeezing ketchup into Ziploc bags. (Students are also fond of swiping great deals of bent silverware and chipped plates, as any trip to a dorm room will reveal.)