“Enjoy!”
Hearing Roxanne the lunch lady’s words pierce through the white noise of the small caf, I couldn’t but stare down at the six cardboard-esque chicken nuggets on my styrofoam plate. For the past three-and-a-half years, I’d been eating the exact same thing each day of the school week. And, considering the quality of the Sodexo/Aramark lunches that have ingrained themselves into the lunchtime diets of high schoolers nationwide, Roxanne’s wishful words (as well as the chicken nuggets) were impossible to digest.
You see, stumbling into my final year of high school, I was struck with tragedy: off-campus lunch, for me, was a no-go. For first semester, at least, all odds were against me. I had lost my ID card, had never applied for a parking pass, and had peer tutoring three days a week and college applications suffocating the other two. In fact, the only off-campus experience I had that semester involved a class-ditch, a quick trip to Chicken Lit, and a sneaky returning and smuggling of former student Benji Kan back into the building disguised as a current Huskie. Safe to say, for $7.99 and hours of panicked text messages, those five chicken tenders with Yummy Sauce were hardly worth the work.
Second semester, however, is what has really opened my eyes to this liberating school policy. Nowadays, shriveled up chicken nuggets have been replaced by savory Panda Express orange chicken morsels. Frozen pizza slices have gone obsolete in the midst of customizable Mod Pizzas. Plastic-cheese nachos have been upgraded into fresh, homestyle Taps burritos.
Yet, while the food is undoubtedly tastier, off-campus lunch has managed to satisfy much more than just my taste buds. To me, off-campus is a hallmark NNHS senior privilege not for its meals, but rather its sense of freedom. For years, the seven-forty-five to three-ten block of time for North students has been dictated and governed by long, droning bells and some (absolutely garbage) music. And, while certain classes have, without a doubt, been extremely informative and engaging (one of my favorite classes lets me write blogs about off-campus lunch, how cool is that!), to say that doing ceramics or swimming units is a good use of fifty minutes would be flat-out lying. Yet, with the final-year gem of off-campus, the monotony of (for the most part) useless lectures and worksheets is sliced in half with a quick Chipotle run, speeding away from assassin targets, and sharing precious last moments with high school friends you may not see for years starting next fall.
Even more abstractly, the term “off-campus lunch,” intrinsically, can be a bit misleading, as the possibilities for this period of freedom span far beyond just a mid-day meal. With this brief, fifty-minute-long “get out of jail free card,” I’ve heard countless stories of quick naps at home, high-intensity gym sessions, and failed attempts at the infamous Sonic Challenge. Hell, a couple of friends and I even have a group chat dedicated to honing our nonexistent basketball skills at Nike or Abbeywood park during our sixth period downtime in a long-anticipated match against some former-Panther, current-Redhawk students. Not only is off-campus lunch a great way to destress after a (seemingly unavoidable) failed attempt at an ELA test, but it fosters activities and challenges that are oftentimes hard to come by in a busy high schooler’s free time.
Looking back, I’ll be the first to admit that my initial impressions of off-campus lunch were wrong. In reality, it can dish up some delicious meals, create time for relaxation and leisure, and (with chicken tenders and a North alum who really wants to say “hi” to Mrs. Moore and Mr. Kim) connect old friends with new perspectives and environments.
So, as we come down to the final months of senior perks before being once-again thrown into different schools as clueless freshmen, I hope that you take Roxanne’s advice to heart.
Enjoy.
