The DAWTstaff wants to know; what was the poorest thing you ever did in college/postgrad?
“I sold my entire DVD and video game collection for $120 at GameStop (It was probably worth close to $800) so I could go to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl in 2008. Ticket was $40. Gas was $20. I had $60 for beer and food. Crashed on a hotel room floor on New Year’s Eve. I bought a case of Natural Light, a pint of Popov vodka and ate off the McDonald’s dollar menu for 36 hours. I am forever grateful for the sacrifices of Easy Company, because the special edition of Band of Brothers DVD set netted me about $30 so I could watch Tony Temple destroy Arkansas in person.”
“My first job paid me $28,000 a year. Each paycheck was like $800. Just insulting. I bought a crate of mac and cheese from Aldi for five bucks every week and that’s what I ate every day for six months until I finally quit my job, got a better one and could actually feed myself real food.”
“I used to make something I called “Mac and Casserole” which was just two boxes of mac and cheese, a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, hot dogs and chopped up celery. It’d make about 6-8 meals and would last me a few days. Total cost: $4.”
-Anonymous, (UMKC, Class of 2016)
“It was the last week of the semester and I had just got done with finals. I went out with some friends to celebrate the end of the semester and was buying shots all night. I woke up to $0.84 in my bank account. I was supposed to drive home the next day because my fraternity house closed the day after finals and didn’t open up until the Friday before spring semester. My parents typically sent me a check every couple of weeks for groceries and gas. This was pre-Venmo and PayPal wasn’t used by Boomers, so the only option was for my parents to wire me money via Western Union. Nope, wasn’t going to make them do that after telling them I blew all of my money on booze. I was deathly hungover and did not roll out of bed until 1pm the next day. The president of our fraternity was doing one last sweep of the house before locking it up for Christmas break and told me to make sure I was gone by 3pm because the cleaners were coming. I was screwed. I hadn’t packed a single thing. The water had been shut off so I couldn’t shower. No one was around to spot me some money, everyone was gone. All of my friends on campus had left too. I heard the back porch door close and the president drove off. I was all alone in the house. I went from room to room and gathered up as much spare change and singles as I could and prayed that it was enough for gas to get home. This was when gas was nearly four dollars a gallon. I needed $20 to get from Columbia to KC. I went bombing into couches and drawers for the next hour and scrounged up $20 in quarters and dimes. I stashed it all in a ziploc bag and counted it out in front of the cashier. He was excited and even helped me because they were low on quarters. Win-win. It was $20 on the nose. I even had a little left over for a can of Grizzly wintergreen. Rolled into my parents driveway on fumes. Merry Christmas.”
-Anonymous (Mizzou, Class of 2011)
“I was really strapped for cash one weekend and I was going to have to choose between booze and food. I chose to spend the last $24 in my wallet on a case of Natty Light, a fifth of Kentucky Gentleman and a two-liter of Dr. Shasta. My fraternity served a very lightly attended breakfast service at 6am on Fridays. I grabbed two gigantic Tupperware containers from my apartment and woke up at 5:30am and set off for the frat house. Luckily, no one was ever awake in the house that early for Friday breakfast. I ate a big plate of biscuits and gravy, waited for our house chef to take his smoke break and started loading up the containers with biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon, sausage, muffins, donuts, anything that was of substance, I stuffed it in. I stashed them all in my backpack and ate like a king for the weekend.”
-Anonymous (Saint Louis University, Class of ’09)
What was the poorest thing you did in college? Drop it in the comments. No shame here.