Social anxiety is real, even when you’re not being social.

Eating by yourself is so lovely, but can feel awkward if you’re just sitting in a dining hall by yourself. You feel like everybody care’s what you’re doing a lot more than they actually do, or you just feel bad for taking sitting as one person in a multi-person seating area. So we asked some of our staff what their favorite ways to eat alone on campus are, here are some answers.

• Get a Diana pizza and go eat the whole thing on a bench in riverside

• Get food from a halal cart mid-study session and take it back to a library

• Take a Ferris meal to go and people-watch on a lawn 

• Eat with a good book! Interestingly, this has started some lovely conversations with strangers, so be prepared to share your thoughts on whatever you’re reading, or wear headphones if you don’t want to be bothered.

• Get Chef Mike’s and eat it on Earl or Low steps​

• Make a bold move: sit down with a friend group without asking, and start talking to them. Make some friends—or enemies.

• Take up an entire corner couch area in Hewitt for a movie night. Stretch out and set your laptop up. If anyone asks if they can sit on an adjacent couch, stare menacingly.

• Sit at one of the big round tables in John Jay by yourself, then when someone inevitably asks if they can take the seat across from you, stare at them without saying anything for just a beat too long to establish dominance.

• Eat your JJ’s meal while staring out into the void. This food is fuel. That is that. Let your eyes cross. This is now a time to chat, so be glad that you are by yourself. This is a connection of you seeing beyond yourself in the microcosmos. This is molecules breaking down, this is bonds breaking, this is electrons, previously shared, now powering your body via rearrangement.

John Jay via Bwarchive