Advice to Future Exonians: Food for Thought
By SAM ALTMAN ‘26
As a new student coming to Exeter, the dining situation can be a daunting one. Whom to sit with? Cutting in lines? How many seats is too many to “reserve”? No worries, I’ve got you covered.
The first choice is deciding which dining hall to go to in the first place: Grainger or Elm Street. Lunch might as well be a bloodbath in terms of lines, so it is prudent to simply run to the one you can get to the quickest. That being said, at least Elm has two distinct lines — Grainger simply ends up usually with a bulging caterpillar of a line sticking out of it by 12:15 p.m.
Dinner, though, is a completely different story. If you enjoy vast empty spaces, little-to-no social interaction, and listening to that one group of Tetris players yell in the corner, Grainger is surely the place for you at dinner. The menus are almost always the exact same, it’s just that Elm perhaps feels a bit more homey, especially in the evening.
Elm, however, has its own problems. Suppose you go there at a popular time (especially when sports teams arrive). In that case, you will soon discover the prevalent problem of skipping: what we can only assume were once civilized Exonians turn into lawless hungry dogs in the presence of a long lunch or dinner line. Luckily for you, I know all the ways to keep them away.
Firstly, the most common mistake is immediately turning right when you walk into Elm. For some reason, the vast majority of us have an innate bias to prefer the right side, and so if you consciously turn left, not only will your line be shorter, but most of the skippers don’t care enough to think about this, so they will go to the right line.
Another way you can mitigate the harm of skippers at both dining halls is by knowing how to identify them, and thus how to avoid them. While there will always be the miscellaneous individual who breaks the rules, the real danger is the flock of girls staring at their phones who look like they are the washed-up prep posse or the classic group of 7-foot male lacrosse players who have no shame. If you ever see them, turn back, because that section of the line is about to grow exponentially.
After you finally get to the hot food section, just get your food, and go. Don’t be that one person who reaches far to the left or the right to grab a food they really wanted or accidentally missed. Try not to make small talk at the drink station because, trust me, it’s an awkward amount of time — too much for a quick hello, and too little for any sort of life update.
When you go to sit down, you want to pick a place that somewhat matches your party size. If you sit at a long table with only two or three friends, you should expect to be completely overrun by a friend group or sports team that can’t find another space soon. And, if you opt for a high table, you should be ready to defend the other chairs at it with your life, because other students are vicious and will try to guilt you into giving yours away.
Finally, please clean up your questionable mustard stains and juice spills, because, by not doing so, you’re only further restricting the space people have to sit, and thus accentuating all of the above. So there it is — the delicious guide for dining at Exeter. It is a lot to chew on (no pun intended), but it should serve to teach the basics. Whatever happens though, at least something we can always count on at Exeter is that the panini press will always come in clutch, even when D-Hall shenanigans are at their worst, and that this article will always be needing an update.