Welcome back to another update of the Beautiful Penn State blog and I hope this finds you well. It is mid-third week of the semester and we are almost halfway to Spring Break, bringing excitement and stress to a high point but so many more opportunities await. While I know that I talk a lot about the wildlife around campus, particularly the squirrels, I feel that I rarely cover the food spots, weather, or friends aspects of life at Penn State. Not to worry, though, as this post will discuss all three important factors in our college experience in my typical fashion of relating it to our collective psyche, or at the least the parts we share in common.
Walking to class on Monday morning, I was dejected in the face of all of the assignments to complete despite not even being an hour into the first day of the week. But in passing the Old Botany building, covered and surrounded in a beautiful sheet of snow, I couldn’t help feeling that this pure seasonal precipitation was a form of catharsis for me, and enjoyed a walk back in just a t-shirt and jeans. As I’m writing this blog, snow has been coming down all morning, sparing me from a similar walk to class at eight-thirty in the morning and allowing me to sleep in and work on assignments while gazing out at the brilliant flurrying of snowflakes jostling to make it to the ground first before being blown against the side of the building. Likewise, many of us feel that we have to be the fastest to be the best, but sometimes slowly and lazily is the most effective way to ensure we get where we want to go. Some days are for grinding homework and doing as much as possible, but others are for relaxing and taking it easy. Our best looks different for each of us, and even more so every day, like how varied and unique each flake of snow is. On a windy day, the fattest snowflakes are the ones that touch the ground, leading me to reevaluate my perception on a productive day.
As many college kids experience, a late night of spending time with friends often leads to being hungry and pursuing a way to rectify that. Well, lo and behold, my night playing pong in a Simmons supplemental dorm with 7 friends was no different, and around 2 in the morning I decided it was time to eat and go to bed. My friend James and I agreed that we didn’t want to go too far, leading to him posing the question, “Are you hungry?” Now, to the ordinary student at State College, this may seem like a stupid question, because duh, of course you’re hungry! But to the experienced part of the Penn State extended family, you know this is a ponderance of going to the restaurant named Are U Hungry.
Luckily, this was my cheat day because they’re known for their “Fat” line of sandwiches and shirts, including the Fat Blunt, Fat Lion, and Fat Ranch, just to name a few. Their selling point is the inclusion of mozzarella sticks and French fries inside the sandwiches, in addition to the specific ingredients in each respective Fat sandwich. A short line later and James and I had ordered our sandwiches (plus a shirt). Not even fifteen minutes later, I had my bacon, egg, steak, and cheese Fat sandwich with the unique, aforementioned inclusions. And for me, this was a productive night.
