All by myself: The trials of independence

Independence. By the very definition of the word, it is not requiring or relying on something else for assistance.

After sophomore year at Princeton, students move out of their residential colleges and into "upperclassmen" status. By doing so, they lose the privilege of eating in the dining halls. So they are faced with a choice: Do they join an eating club and not worry about meals, or do they choose to become self-reliant and feed themselves? You'd be surprised to find that in the spring of their sophomore years, some upwards of 25% choose to be "culinarily" independent. But what exactly does that mean?

As an independent student, you must provide for yourself. You can still eat meals at Frist (as many do) using points, but you soon find yourself tired of the same four basic Frist food groups: pizza, sandwiches, chicken tenders and fries. This also tends to become quite expensive, as the average meal at Frist will run about $7.00 (on a good day), multiplied by 3 times a day, $21.00, multiplied by 7 days, $147.00, by 36 weeks, and well you get the picture. Man cannot live on Frist alone.

There is also the C-store where you can purchase such staples as milk and cereal and marshmallow crème. However, like the food gallery a floor below, inflation runs rampant here, as cereal goes for about $5.00 for a box of Corn Pops and $2.50 for a half-gallon of milk that looks like it was kicked into the refrigerator and is about four days from its expiration date. So Frist becomes a costly option.

There are also the dining halls. You can still purchase a meal plan and eat at any dining hall you choose to. I'm just going to let you figure that one out for yourselves.

Finally, there is the option of cooking for oneself in a University kitchen. In the Spellman halls, the rooms have a full kitchen which provides an excellent convenience to the residents in terms of accessibility. However, Spellman housing is limited and many independents find themselves on the out. Hence, they must cook in a kitchen that is located in an upperclass dorm, such as Scully, where I live. Cooking, in itself, is no problem. The problem is access. Well, at least one of the problems is.

The independent room draw process is one of the most frustrating events I have been a part of. I had, what I thought, was a decent draw time (middle of the pack), but when it got to my turn, there were rooms the size of closets left. So I walked out and drew with the normal draw and happened to luck into a room in Scully, two floors above the kitchen.

So then when you have this kitchen access, you have to find a place to buy groceries to actually cook. If you don't have a car, you're screwed. McCaffery's, through a deal with the USG, conveniently delivers to your door. That is, provided you have a credit card. If you don't, you are out of luck. And if you do order, and you want say, some melons, who picks these out for you? I know that I like a firmness to my cantaloupes that comes from squeezing them to find a certain suppleness. I can't squeeze melons on the Internet. You could also take the bus to Wegman's, but it is next to impossible to carry bags and bags of chicken wings and Shake-n-Bake on a bus with a full load of people. Not to mention the attitude the bus driver gives you with her "C'mon" and "I got a bus full of people to drop off" and "Don't drip that damn ice cream on my seats!"

For a school that claims that it does not wish for Princeton's upper-class dining options to revolve around the Eating Clubs, it sure does seem to be making the choice pretty easy for students. Being independent is taxing on the souls of some of these students. Have you seen their weary, hungry eyes? Wandering from Spelman hall to Spelman hall, begging for scraps. I just ask this year's sophomores to weigh their options before they make the choice to go independent. What seems like a good idea can turn into two years of anguish. Eating clubs aren't all that bad, I mean it's only, what, an extra thousand or two a year? Stephen M. Caldwell is from Stafford, Texas. He can be reached at scaldwel@princeton.edu.