By Julia Herrick

Disclaimer: This piece does not reflect the actual eating habits or experiences of all TMU students so please: do not try this at home or at HOEM.

For Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students, November is not just a month, it’s an endurance test. It’s the time where the midterms blur into finals and your bank account practically runs empty from late night Uber Eats orders and Value Village shopping sprees. 

The concept of three meals a day becomes a luxury, “nobody even eats breakfast anymore,” you think to yourself. What follows is what a typical TMU student actually eats during this terrible, awful, no good, very bad and LONG month. 

Nov. 1 – Meal prep era

Groceries are fresh, spirits are high and nothing has mysteriously rotted in the back of the fridge yet. Your bank account still believes in you and you genuinely think you can handle school, work, a social life and feeding yourself daily all at once!

Nov. 3 – Balanced breakfast

Eggs, toast and maybe even some fruit if you can possibly afford it. You make yourself a hot cup of coffee that tastes like dirt. You are energized. You are hydrated. You are doomed but you don’t know it yet.

Nov. 6 – Lazy lunch

Meal prep has stopped. You are now mixing and matching leftovers into different strange combinations that only look like food if you squint really hard. Pasta and salsa? Sure. Pop-Tarts and romaine lettuce? Why the hell not. Rice and despair? Delish!

Nov. 8 – The free pizza hustle

You’ve cracked the system. There’s always a club tabling in the Student Learning Centre (SLC) with free pizza. You nod along politely while they blabber on about some nonsense, staring at their pamphlet while plotting what you must accomplish to procure your next slice.

Nov. 10 – Just coffee for today

Coffee. Nothing more, nothing less. You think about all the things your mom would yell at you if she knew this is all that you ate today. 

Nov. 12 – Street meat

You grab a hot dog from the hotdog stand on campus, a Gould Street staple. You sit outside eating as you watch the pigeons fight over crumbs on the ground, and you feel a strong sense of community, relief and immediate stomach pain from whatever kind of meat that hotdog was made of.

Nov. 14 – SLC microwave gourmet experience

You have officially graduated from cooking to reheating. You are standing on the fourth floor of the SLC watching your 30 cent noodles spin while reevaluating all of your life choices.

Nov. 16 – The networking lunch

A free sandwich from an event hosted by the TMU Career & Co-op Center, this “casual networking opportunity” for students is really a “casual food-getting opportunity” for someone like yourself. You don’t need to network but you do eat one unseasoned turkey sandwich and leave with a free sticker and tote bag. Go you!

Nov. 18 – The Metro spiral

You go to the Metro on campus with good intentions: noodles, some vegetables and maybe a snack. Your card declines. You stare at the display like it personally betrayed you and you leave with less dignity than you had walking in as well as a newfound respect for those who shoplift.

Nov. 20 – Vending machine breakfast…and lunch…and dinner

It’s 11 p.m. in Kerr Hall. You shake a random vending machine like it owes you money, and somehow you leave with a slightly squished granola bar that may or may not be four-years-old.

Nov. 23 – The group project snack

Someone brought Timbits. You eat two and realize it’s the first food you’ve touched all day thanks to lectures, deadlines and existential dread. Your stomach quietly mutinies as you try to focus on finishing slides three and four.

Nov. 25 – The stress snack

Lunch consists of nibbling on your pencil while simultaneously panicking over a 10-page essay due by midnight and realizing the Wi-Fi has been down the entire time so none of your work is saved.

Nov. 27 – The existential snack

You find a single chip at the bottom of your backpack, your lucky day. You eat it slowly wondering if it counts as lunch or just as character development.

Nov. 29 – The airborne dinner

Dinner is…nothing. Just the scent of someone else’s leftovers in the library. You close your eyes and inhale deeply. Calories via osmosis, you’ve got it down to a science.

Nov. 30 – Transcendence 

You have evolved beyond food and you live purely off of caffeine, stress and the vague promise of winter break. Your body is 60 per cent coffee and 40 per cent deadlines, this is your true form.

And that’s November for you as a TMU student. Does December bring a full belly and something other than Red Bull to drink? That all depends on if your parents decided to buy groceries in preparation of your fabled return home.