For many incoming freshmen, the overwhelming worry of gaining the so-called ‘Freshman 15’ is enough to scare the willies out of you and inspire you to go on a spontaneous salad kick. Believe me—I’ve seen it happen! But campus dining is so much scarier than that. Even worse than gaining 15 pounds during your first semester is realizing that you no longer love food the way you used to.

Sure, we all grew up eating elementary school chili and overcooked hot dogs. For some, those were questionable food items. But overall, we loved it! The menu changed constantly, and we only ate one (or, at the most, two) meals outside of our cozy homes.

Even if you had a miserable food experience at school, you could always come home and cry to your mom about it. Chances are (if you cried hard enough), she would fix your favorite snack and your troubles would melt away in time for dinner.

Flash forward to college, and you find yourself eating all three meals in the campus dining hall. ALL THREE MEALS! And let’s not forget that this happens every single day, including weekends. It’s even worse on weekends! The horror! The misery! Plate after plate of depressing foodstuffs, served to you with pride three times a day by dining staff with gloves of questionable cleanliness. I’m shuddering just thinking about it.

Perhaps the worst thing about the standardized campus dining hall system is that most cafeterias circulate their menus on a weekly basis. Let’s pretend that we are all standing in line at our dining hall of choice, perusing the lovely menu that’s being broadcast on the big screen. Now pretend that we show up in the cafeteria again, next week.

Surprise, surprise--the menu is the same. And the weekend brunch menu rarely changes (if ever). You know what I’m talking about. Not only do we have to endure a solid week of sub-par, lukewarm chicken with overcooked mixed veggies, but we also have the pleasure of stomaching it again next week. Such joy.

It’s no surprise that we get tired of consuming the same dreary plates week after week. Even more dreary is the fact that our bank accounts have already been charged for this semester’s future icky meals, whether we eat them or not. And sometimes, you don’t even consume your money’s worth of food. It’s like we are getting poorer every time the cafeteria serves a disgusting meal.

In addition to these horrors, we also realize that dining hall food quality is not all it cracks up to be. The cheese slices in the deli line are fake. The pizza crust tastes like cardboard, and not even parmesan can fix it.

The hamburgers taste like hot dog insides mixed with dirt. It’s downright cruelty. College students are infamous for their insatiable hunger! Is this really what we are paying for? Is this really what the college experience is about? Don’t we deserve better than this?

Because of dining halls, I now refuse to eat the following: questionable fried appetizers of any kind, pretzels with icing, artificial cheese slices of any kind, black beans mixed with brown rice, ham and turkey cubes, avocado spread, baked salmon, soymilk, scrambled liquid eggs, semi-cooked hamburgers, re-fried bean dip, any pizza that’s not from ye old national pizza restaurant chain, deli meat wraps, steak/pork/chicken tacos, and Boston crème pie.

So, watch your back the next time you pile up on the weekly special at your nearest dining hall. It’s sad but true—dining halls can ruin food for you.