April 28, 2017

SUNSPOTS | How Would You Spend 300 BRBs in 3 Weeks?

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Michaela Brew / Sun Sports Photography Editor Bear Necessities in RPCC. September 1, 2015

You did it. After countless, grueling months spent slogging uphill (physically, intellectually and emotionally) in sleet and snow, you’ve finally made it to spring—and oh my god that summer internship is so close you can practically taste it. In fact, the only things standing between you and the sweet release of death graduation/commencement are Slope Day, a few pesky finals… oh, and the fat wad of unused Big Red Bucks sitting in your Cornell dining account. Forget finals, what the hell are you going to do about that?

Given that this hypothetical scenario isn’t so hypothetical for lots of Cornell students, we asked our writers and our readers to devise their own “meal plans” based on a simple premise:

If you had three weeks to spend $300 in BRB’s, how would you do it?

Here’s what we came up with:

 

Charlie Liao ‘18: Spend them all on generic Terrace salads in one sitting and then sell them to the people waiting in that horrifically long line.

Gabe Ares ‘19: Easy, I did that last week. Live on the AG quad; go to Trillium for every meal. There’s no need for charity when you can just buy two burgers a day.

Sasha Chanko ‘19: This is a tough question, so I consulted the POTUS for some help. Here’s how it went:

“3 weeks and 300 BRBs means 100 a week, right?”
“WRONG!”
“So, then what should I…”
“CHINA!”
“So, noodles and rice?”
“HEALTH CARE IS SO COMPLICATED”
“So noodles and rice, but no soda?”
“PUTIN”
“SO… noodles, no soda, skip the rights.”
“NORTH KOREA”
“Ah, and a side of bomb-a.”

And there you have it: following Donald Trump’s advice, I would spend it all on noodles and bamba. SAD!

Jacqueline Quach ‘19: A $14.28 per day allotment would allow me to buy a two-pack box of Hot Pockets, a big bag of Doritos and a smoothie from Jansen’s, all of which should be enough for a day’s sustenance.

After I bring all my goodies back to my room, I’d microwave the Hot Pockets, cut open the front end of each one and insert Doritos into the slits for some crunchiness that is perfectly juxtaposed with the Hot Pocket’s gooey cheese. Of course, one does not wait for the Hot Pocket to cool; one simply dives in and burns one’s tongue, which would be soothed by the cool smoothie. You see, my young grasshoppers, everything has a purpose.

Furthermore, these items are stocked in many flavors at Jansen’s. Hot Pockets: five, including Pepperoni Pizza (my personal fave). Doritos: five, including Jacked: Ranch Dipped Hot Wings (my personal fave). Smoothies: three, including Sin (my personal fave). There are 75 different possible combinations of these three elements, so I could actually try a different combination each day… if I had two and a half months to spend 1,071 BRBs!!! *sigh* A girl can dream…

Olivia Lutwak ‘18: The sad thing is that this sounds scarily easy to me. I’m addicted to specialty coffees at Café Jennie. I never thought I’d fall a slave to consumerism, but here I am scrolling through my BRB spending history, and Café Jennie takes up almost every line. The way I see it, their matcha lattes and coconut javivas are my rewards for getting out of bed every morning. They fuel my motivation to come onto campus. So, 300 BRBs x 3 weeks = two $4.85 specialty coffees per day + $96.30 left over for meals in between drinks.

Rebecca Saber ‘18: Buy 299 m&m bags and 1 pack of gum from Libe. That’s enough m&ms to last the whole summer!

Lev Akabas ‘19: Buy food for my friends with BRBs and sell it to them at a discount.

Winner: Me
Winner: My friends
Loser: Cornell, for requiring students to pay 500 dollars per semester in exchange for 500 units of a currency that is by definition less valuable than dollars
Loser: Mozzarella sticks that come out to roughly 50 cents per bite

Jeremiah Kim ‘19: Gonna buy as much bread, eggs and Cornell peanut butter as I possibly can so I can make as many scrambled egg-Cornell peanut butter sandwiches as I possibly can.

 

Here’s what you came up with:

 

Shea Belsky: “The Burrito Beast Plan” Breakfast burrito from Trillium, meat burrito from Terrace for lunch, then Ivy Room burrito for dinner.

Matt Vani: “The Vending Machine Plan” — Try to buy a pair of Beats headphones with BRBs in a Cornell vending machine in Mann Library.

Peter McKendall: “The One and Done Plan” Buy food for my whole house for one day, specifically breakfast burritos at Trill, then their choice at Terrace, followed by dessert for dinner at the Dairy Bar. One day. $300 BRBs.

Reed Rosenberg: “The Potassium Plan” I go to Nasties and buy 300 bananas. End of story.

Austin: “The Biden Fund” Start a campaign for all students with leftover BRBs to donate so that when Joe Biden gets to campus he can have all the free Dairy Bar ice cream he wants, and take some home!

Nick Smith: “The Happy Dave Plan” 1) Swipe into Okenshields with BRBs, 2) walk out of Okenshields, 3) repeat steps 1 and 2

Steven Lopez: “The Lopez Experience” A once-in-a-lifetime bo-burger-filled coma-inducing experience. 50 bo burgers. One day.

Anonymous: “The Academic Integrity Plan” Buy tubs of Ben & Jerry’s from Noyes and giving them to people in exchange for taking my iClicker to class.

Anonymous: “The Y U So Expensive Plan”  Buy 3 Naked juices.

Chris Umeki: Literally anything except that “BluePrint Organic” drink from Libe.

Keerti Hariharan: Buy 300 packs of skittles from Libe, open the packs, take the skittles out and then line them up and down the Slope in a straight line. Then slurp them up one by one like an animal on all fours.

Sol: Buy all the non-perishable items in Noyes and donate them to a local food bank or through the Big Red Food Drive! (And then buy a couple of pints of ice cream as your reward 🙂 )

Ruby: I actually still have 400 BRBs in my account right now, so I was planning on raiding Noyes and worsening my genetic predisposition to high blood pressure by living off ramen & pizza rolls for the next six months.

Willy: Take 30 girls on 10 hot dates to Nasties.

Anonymous: Buy about 100 jars of Nutella and an immeasurable amount of self-loathing.

Augie Kramer: Bathe in 46.875 gallons of sweet, sweet Brisk.