Freshman
year, you are working with monopoly money.
You’ve got your swipe card and it’ll get you three square meals a day,
plus all of the midnight Planet Sub runs for ice cream and chips that your
little heart could possibly desire. In
the case of most freshman girls (the guys tend to eat a little more), you
always end up with leftover meal points at the end of the semester, so you
never worry about budgeting your meals or anything like that.
Senior year
is a little different. Granted, since I
live on campus I am lucky enough to have a half meal plan, which comes in handy
when it’s noon on a Saturday and I’m too lazy to make your own breakfast, but
just motivated enough to haul myself and whatever roommate happens to be awake
to the cafeteria in sweatpants for some biscuits and gravy. But I pay for the rest of my groceries, and
it turns out that pop tarts, hot pockets, and other luxuries from home are not
exactly in a college student’s budget.
Bottom
line: Freshman year you joke about wanting free food…senior year, you decide
you need free food. Enter Saturday night auctions. I found out about these auctions through my
sorority’s philanthropy chair, who passes along volunteering opportunities to
the chapter every week. It turns out
that if you volunteer at an auction, there is a high likelihood of free food
being involved—in most cases, sandwiches, cookies, and all sorts of easy to
serve goodies, plus sometimes fancy treats leftover from the actual auction
food. So the running joke in my house is
that I have been spending my Saturday nights volunteering at auctions so I can
enjoy free and delicious dinners every weekend.
I’d be
lying if I said the free sandwiches weren’t a nice bonus, but I really like
working the auctions. In addition to all
of the typical good volunteering feelings, it is an interesting people watching
experience. The last two auctions I’ve
helped with have been at the Starlight Theater and the Marriott downtown, which
are both beautiful places as is, but it is even cooler to see them transformed
into a “Bayou Bash” for a school for children with disabilities, or an “Art for
the Children” benefit for medical missions in Africa. People come in their beautiful dresses and
dapper tuxes, and the tables are set with elaborate lamps and centerpieces,
with crème brulee waiting in the wings.
Even if I’m
not actually a medical mission doctor or someone at the auction, it still feels
like stepping into a different world than a college cafeteria for a few
hours. It makes me wonder if someday I
will be in a position to be this generous, and it makes me grateful for the
people in Kansas City who can afford to give financially to the causes that I
can usually only give time to.
So am I
trolling for sandwiches? Yes. But I am doing some sort of festive
wonderland. And I like to think that even
if I’m eating cheap cookies instead of crème brulee, I’m still a bit of a
philanthropist for a night.
Table Decoartions for the Bayou Bash for Horizon Academy
Group of Alpha Sigma Alphas helping out at the Art for the Children Auction at the Marriott
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