Going on my tenth straight hour at the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, I am entering delusion. The bags under my eyes have their own bags, my hands are shaking from my 6th cup of coffee in 24 hours, and the words in my Economics textbook just look like jagged lines of nothingness.
Out of nowhere, a loud roar echoes across the walls. It sounds like a mixture of Bruce Springsteen (circa his 2009 Super Bowl halftime show) and Godzilla. Ever Tech student will let out one of these noises in their tenure at Tech; it’s the noise of an over-studied, under-fueled ‘studyholic.’
I make my way over the vending machine and I’m met with the worst decision of a lifetime: what do I want to eat?
This only compares to the moment when you walk over to the pantry, knowing your home is filled to the brink with food, you take two seconds, and decide nothing is worth your desire and you starve/drive to Zaxby’s.
Nothing meets my needs, but my stomach won’t let me leave without getting something. I’m in a hold-up with no escape. What to do? I think I have the solution: let the machines decide.
Growing-up has its perks, but what no one tells you is that some things, things you wish you could get rid of, don’t quite just vanish.
In terms of every high schooler’s worst nightmare, I avoided the worst: I had good skin with little to no acne. But there are somethings that I haven’t escaped. One of which is my indecisiveness with food.
This is what I’m asking: to have a random button installed in vending machines. Sure, we would have to worry about people who have allergies to certain products.
And sure, we would have to worry about people who don’t care for what they get, save for a few options they just cannot eat. But ultimately, they can make the choice.
The incredibly indecisive person inside of me though, often cannot make a choice, which leads me to hunger and anger and sadness. All of which could be avoided with a random button.
Growing-up is fun, but sometimes, I wish I was at that age where my mom still made me my afternoon snack I never asked for but nonetheless accepted and ate entirely.
This is what this random button can do: giving me something I would never have asked for, but will nonetheless eat.