Free

There was this picture in a person's profile on Orkut a few months ago. It said-"There is no free lunch". At the time I believed it and I guess I even understood what he was trying to say. Then, I came to Dartmouth.

The first week here was a flurry of free food. Practically everywhere we went, there was some free food on offer. BBQs, seminars, presentations.. you name it and chances are there that they were having pizzas or burgers or salad or cookies or all of them. I was delighted to find so many things on offer. I savored them as much as I could (within the norms though). I was consuming, in the land of consumerism.

My third week has almost ended. In this post I specifically want to write this week's free food day by day. As the MS-rep to the Thayer Council, on Monday I had lunch with the Dean of Thayer school. On Wednesday I had my dinner at the mentoring get together (for the last time, I wonder), then on Thursday I ate pizza at the Thayer council meeting in the afternoon and pizza again at a Google seminar in the evening. Today, the last working day of the week, I went to a seminar which was provided free lunch.

The engineering career fair was on Wednesday and as a result I got a lot of free t-shirts too during the last week. A total of four. I like the google one most. It says "I'm Feeling Lucky". I am sure I have described these things in sufficient detail.

I've been thinking about all this free stuff and wondering why they do it. I still believe "there is no free lunch". Maybe it helps the students do better, they have a sense of belonging to the college when they wear the college merchandise. Or may be these are all marketing gimmicks and nothing more.