Claire:
While I don’t currently have a meal plan, I remember two years ago, as a freshman, having to figure out what to do with my absurdly large meal plan. I can recall doing the math around this time of the year and realizing that I would have to get more than three meals a day to go through all of my dining dollars, meal swipes, and snack swipes. It was nice not to have to worry about running out of food, but I also felt guilty that I wasn’t using all of my very expensive meal plan. Ultimately, I didn’t end up using all of my plan, ending the year with about 70 meal swipes unused. In the time since then, I’ve learned a few tricks that I wished I had used my first year at Stevens. One is: take advantage of the opportunities Stevens gives you to use up your swipes on things other than food. Every year, Stevens advertises ways to use up your swipes in creative ways like donating to food banks or ordering whole take-out pizzas from the dining hall. Another way, and my personal favorite, is to guest swipe upperclassmen who don’t have meal plans into Pierce. I promise you that if you offer any off-campus upperclassmen free food, they will almost always say yes unless they’re already getting free food from someone else. At the end of the day, the best way to get the most value out of your money is to not purchase a meal plan after freshman year.
Ethan:
The Tera Bite meal plan consists of 230 regular meal swipes, and with 118 days in the semester from the first class to the last final, it is reasonable to assume that you will not get rid of all of your swipes and get the most out of your meal plan. We’re almost halfway through the semester and I know you’re not nearly halfway through your meal plan, so here are some ways to get rid of your spare meal swipes. You could always get your upperclassmen friends (like me) a meal when they’re in need or just use your swipes to buy cases of water and snacks — but that’s no fun. Personally, if I had a surplus of swipes, the first thing I would do is swipe myself into the dining hall and carry out as many apples as I could, and then do it again later when they restock. “What are you doing with these apples?” you may be asking. I would take them to the cannon lookout and throw them as hard as I could and try to reach the Hudson River. As appealing as this sounds, I, unfortunately, do not have a surplus of swipes, so I am encouraging you to do this instead. You could also choose to give out the apples to people around Hoboken that you think could use a pick-me-up. If borderline apple theft doesn’t appeal to you I would recommend just trying to eat as much food on campus as you can. You already paid for it, so might as well use it.
