Excess

When I came into my freshman year of college, I wasn’t particularly worried about food. Factored into my housing cost was a meal plan of about $1,500 for the semester, which was about four months long. It was more than enough. The week before going home for winter break, I had $500 left and only $200 of that was refundable. At the campus store, I managed to spend the remaining $300 on frivolous non-perishables: lucky charms, cake mixes, and saltine crackers. Buying the crackers, I thought, was my best idea ever. I remember thinking, “These never go bad! I should stock up anyway.” Six months later, I’m eating my fifth box of crackers. They’re stale, and their lack of flavor infuriates me. I didn’t think you could have too much of a good thing—until now.

I heard somewhere that there are 1 billon people starving right now. This isn’t new information; despite having been raised by middle-class parents in the wealthiest country, I’ve always known that there are p
eople less fortunate. Still, my first idea was to spend $300 on food for myself. I’m not the only one who has too much, as I’ve also heard that at least 1 billion people are overweight.

How hard would it be for people who, like me, had too much gave their excess to people who didn’t have enough? While you can’t exactly give your excess body weight to someone, you can do something. For example, what if we college students could donate that last bit of money on our meal plans to fight world huger? I’m sure there’s some way we can make this happen.