Probably one of the most important factors when trying to get through the years of college is your nutrition. It can help you study better for tests, perform better in sports and even enable you to get enough sleep. As a student at UR you have a couple of options while deciding where and what you want to eat. As a freshmen, I get 19 meals a week and 150 dining dollars for the whole semester. From Monday through Friday you are supposed to use 3 meals a day (eating breakfast, lunch and dinner,) while on Saturday and Sunday you can eat brunch and dinner, using 2 meals each day.
Of course, nobody really expects you to use ALL your meal swipes each week, or to get all 3 meals on weekdays, but since your meals are already paid for before the semester starts, using your meal swipes can also be considered as getting back some of the money you spend just for being a UR student.
If you’re not a morning person - like you know I’m not - you could potentially be using only 14 meals out of the 19 you’ve paid for, but here are some ways you can use your meal swipes a bit more efficiently.
Whether you eat at Tyler’s Grill or at the Dining Hall (Dhall) you are allowed to use 2 meal swipes every meal. This means that you can have breakfast, lunch or dinner twice. If you’re not a morning person, then you won’t be eating breakfast, but you can always have two dinners! One of the options is going to Dhall and on your way back to your dorm stopping at Tyler’s Grill. Here, you can get some more food in case you get hungry later on (this is specially useful when you stay up late writing essays or studying for tests). Also, instead of buying more food you can buy snacks like muffins, cereal, cookies, candy and fruit.
The other option is going to Tyler’s for dinner and buying enough food so that you have to pay for it using 2 meal swipes. Each meal swipe at Tyler’s is worth about $7.00, so if you buy $14.00 worth of actual food + snacks (or just of food, whatever floats your boat), you can use up 2 swipes and it will seem as if you had two dinners. You can do the same thing over lunch.
The only thing you have to be careful of is using too many meals during the week. If you do eat breakfast, then it’s probably not the best idea to be having double dinners. If you do, then by the time the weekend comes you won’t have enough meals to have brunch or dinner on Sunday. In this case, you can use your dining dollars to buy some snacks if you get hungry during the day. This is way better than using a whole meal swipe because once your card is swiped for a meal, you are automatically charged the $7.00, even if you only bought $4.00 worth of food. With dining dollars, you can go to ETC (which is inside Dhall, to the left of where you go to swipe your spidercard) and buy drinks, chips, gum or whatever you feel like eating. During late nights you can also go to the Dean’s Den (located at the Whitehurst game room) and buy snacks with your dining dollars or go to The Cellar in the Commons (something similar to a T.G.I Friday’s) and use the same currency to pay for your food. Finally, you can go to Tyler’s and pay for your food with your dining dollars in order to not be charged $7.00 just for a burger.
If you’re not a morning person, but you still like to eat a lot, you can always do the same thing! And you don’t have to worry about missing out on brunch during the weekends, cus it’s available until 4:00pm on both Saturday and Sunday.
There’s nothing better than waking up at 3:00pm on a Sunday and still be able to eat pancakes, cereal or scrambled eggs. =)
 Hopefully all of this information will be helpful to you next time you feel like you’re not using enough meals…or next time you get hungry.
