Ever since he was a little boy his great Aunt Jane cooked the most delicious dinners. She was always there to provide him with energy before the long day, or before one of the many sports he played. Or maybe even just after school when he was hungry. As part of the family, aunt Jane was indeed Lebanese too. And she assembled incredible Lebanese meals; unlike the meals he would eat at his friends house. Leaving home would be hard for a number of different reasons. Jean Brillat-Savarin once said “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Would this change to cafeteria food, and the struggle for food as a college student forever change who he was?
So there he was in a different state at Chapman University, away from his community, his friends, and family. Away from the food he knew for so long. There was always regret he didn’t learn more of the great recipes that Aunt Jane had mastered. However, soon enough writing became his favorite leisure thing to do. This writing, mostly about food, was becoming a new way to cultivate his mind and escalate his energy, food wise of course. Killin’ two birds with one stone… At eight in the morning in the grass, pen and paper in hand, with ninety percent of the student population still asleep, there was no where but the beach he would rather be.
Besides the lack of food, he was excited for the new semester. The atmosphere on campus was warm and inquisitive, a friendly face or two but the rest full of opportunity. The good vibe from the music playing was short lived, interrupted when the professors told him how much work he’d be doing. He wouldn’t have time to write about food! He would have to earn his health with every new sentence, while simultaneously studying for all his courses.
Practice does make perfect though, and he knows multi-tasking can be very rewarding.
Everything came down to a decision he needed to make; should he stay in the school or not? Well, the cons are that there would be a lot of juggling, weekends would be workdays, and projects can always be intimidating. Pros included his teachers looked like they could keep the class interesting, he would be outside of his comfort zone, and possibly that projected he wanted to do could be incorporated with his writing about food and family somewhere down the line. Oh, and not to mention there were some cute girls all his classes.
He had a vast image of himself leaving freshman year. Able to multi-task with new acquired techniques and boundaries, writing in his future classes would decease to faze him. He would wonder if dropping out of college was really worth writing and eating healthy for the rest of his life from the comfort of his Aunt Jane… Some say you are what you eat, he would learn to say you are what you make of it. Cavemen didn’t have gluten free…
Food for the Soul 
Welcome to class! I applaud the connection you’re making between the assignments and your goal of creating a family recipe cookbook. If you’re serious about doing that, at some point let’s talk about how you might begin to organize such a thing and yes, figure out how to theme your projects to that goal.