Share your Penny-Pinching NC State Student Memories
In each issue of NC State magazine, we ask readers to share their stories of their time at NC State. With the economy sputtering, we thought we’d ask how you scrimped, saved and spent as a student. How far did you go to stretch a dollar when you were a student? Tell us your memories of living on a student budget. Did you have a favorite place to get free food? Was there a special event you saved for and how? Did you share textbooks with a roommate or get creative with ways to have fun? A selection of responses will appear in our Autumn issue.
You can share your memories in the comments section of this post, on our Facebook page or by clicking here. We’ll keep this post stuck to the top of the page for a few days.
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Prior to my freshman year all the cafeterias closed due to what I was told was lack of participation for paying customers. Thus, we were left to cook for ourselves in the dormitories, eat in a restaurant, or order pizza among other options. Not having much money we cooked in the dorm and ordered pizza using the multitude of coupons afforded us in the Technician which was published three days a week. The pizza joints got to where they would honor each other’s coupons in their competition for customers. We ordered pizza frequently as we would clip several coupons and end up paying less than a buck in most cases. We had one delivery person from Pizza Transit Authority, PTA, ask us if he need to pay us as our coupons added up to more than the pizza cost. Needless to say the delivery man was confused and the gig was up soon after. All the pizza joints then would only would let us use on coupon per order. It was good food and cheap while it lasted. Right after I graduated I understand the cafeterias were reopened!
Bill Waggoner
BSME ‘79
My parents gave me $15 each week for ALL my expenses, including food. I didn’t have a meal plan any year when I was at State. Every day for breakfast, I stopped at the food wagon behind the bookstore and got a cup of orange juice with ice and 2 cream-filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts. In our dorms we were not allowed to have any cooking devices except a popcorn popper. My roommate and I cooked soup, soup, and more soup along with the popcorn which we ate every single day(and this was no microwave popcorn). There were many times when our YMCA intramural team had won a championship and we celebrated at the steak house and for days after I wouldn’t have the money to eat. Needless so say, I didn’t have a problem with the freshman 15.