MU Honors Program: Student Blog

Meal plans at Miami

As you might already know, there are two meal plans that freshmen can select: Diplomat (declining balance) or Passport (pays for an entire meal), and you can choose between different levels in both.

I will be the first to admit that I’m extremely biased on this topic; I’ve used Diplomat for my entire 3.5 years at Miami, and I don’t know anyone who is still on Passport. My township uses the declining balance accounts, so it was the most familiar system for me. However, I can definitely see advantages and disadvantages associated with both meal plans.

Diplomat is versatile but more expensive. I prefer Diplomat because you can access your account at any time during the day, so it doesn’t matter if you can’t make it to a dining hall at a certain time. It’s also perfect for me because I tend to eat smaller breakfasts and slightly larger lunches. My breakfast is consistently about $2.50 under the Passport limit, while my lunch is usually about $1 over the lunch limit. Of course, if you eat at a buffet-style dining hall, this isn’t an issue.

There are a lot of limits on how you can use Passport, but it is the less expensive option if you plan on eating 19 meals/week. However, that also assumes that you actually will eat all of these meals. I always end up with classes during lunch on either MWF or TR, so I would probably end up losing money on Passport. You can only use Passport during certain times of the day, and you can only swipe it as Passport once. If you want to buy something outside of these times or after you bought a meal, you have to use your snack account. Another inconvenient thing about Passport (for me) is that you are limited to using a certain amount of money during breakfast, lunch, and dinner times when you are at an a la carte location.

Overall, I think Passport is a great plan if you never skip meals, and if you can eat at a specific time every day. If your schedule doesn’t allow you to eat meals at what Miami considers to be “normal” times, then you should probably go with Diplomat.

Events on campus

We’re past the halfway point for this semester, which means that things are speeding up in all of my classes. Even though I’ve been frantically writing papers for the past week, there is still some time to have a social life. Over the past few weeks, I’ve attended some activities on campus that a lot of students might not have heard about, such as the Harrison Olympics, Make-a-Difference-Day, and an Anglo-Saxon poetry reading, and Geek Week begins on Friday.

The Harrison Olympics is an annual competition between all four years of Harrisons. This can lead to some interesting versions of games, such as 4-way Ultimate Frisbee. It can get a little violent, not to mention confusing... I don’t think I ever knew where our goal was. Even though some people have the impression that Harrisons are bookworms who never leave the library, I think we showed that that’s not the case! At the Olympics, you can see the huge variety of interests in our community—for example, there are the cross-country runners, the swimmers, the basketball players, the people who can throw and catch Frisbees, and the gymnast who is more likely to catch a flying object with her head than with her hands. (Yes, that would be me). The Olympics also gives the nefarious types the chance to make pacts with other years, promising to help them win one event in exchange for help with something else. I don’t think the first-years appreciated that aspect, but they’ll learn quickly. :) I’m happy to announce that my year, the Heifers, defeated the Harlots (1^st years), Hedgehogs (2^nd years), and Helixes (3^rd years, and yes, they are the Helixes and not Helices. I asked).

Make-a-Difference-Day is sponsored by HSAB, although I actually participated with the gymnastics club instead of with a group of Honors students. We went to the Family Resource Center in Oxford, where our group was split. About half of them stayed at the FCR to fix windows and do other projects at the building, and the other half of us went into the Oxford community to do yard work. There are groups of students all over Oxford, and the projects change every year. Last year, we painted the Family Resource Center.

When I was in high school, I had kind of romantic notions about college—you know, world politics discussions every night, attending lectures by renowned speakers every week or so—but I recently realized that I haven’t gone to as many lectures outside the classroom as I probably should have. (Of course, I’ve gone to some events and to hear some speakers—Mikhail Gorbachev and Bob Woodward to name two—and a group of us had dinner with Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked. That’s another benefit of being in Honors—sometimes you can participate in a small group discussion or have dinner with speakers!) Anyway, two weeks ago, one of my classes went to an Anglo-Saxon poetry reading down on Western campus. I admit that I was skeptical at first, but it ended up being really interesting and enjoyable. Several professors at Miami read Beowulf and riddles from The Exeter Book in a mixture of modern English and Old English, and we were also treated to a comic version of Beowulf.

Random fact: the first word in Beowulf is “hwaet.”

Also, congratulations on finishing and submitting your Harrison applications. :)