Bringing Family Dinner Traditions to the Dining Hall

How do students bring bits of their family dinners with them to campus?

By: Kelly Matthews

Photo by: Julien Pedro

A new city. New friends. New classes. A new home. Every fall, Boston University freshmen are thrown into a whole new life, flipping every routine upside down and throwing all things familiar out the window. Amidst all this change, students must up and leave the comfort of their dinner table.

Transitioning from the warmth of home-cooked meals to the bustling campus dining halls can be jarring. The cold fluorescent lights and occasional ceiling leak in the Warren Towers dining hall don’t exactly make the adjustment any easier. But between the overlapping chatter, clattering of dishes, and long lines, little bits of home seep into dining hall culture.

For some, that means holding onto small, personal rituals to offer an anchor of familiarity.

“I eat oatmeal and a banana for breakfast religiously every day at home and now here too,” said Diya Parikh (COM ‘30).

For others, this may look like eating at a particular time, or requiring a mandatory stack of phones at the center of the table to enjoy a technology-free meal. Others might never have time for breakfast, continuing their habit of skipping the first meal of the day, while some discover a new routine of grabbing a bite before morning classes.

Campus dining introduces a new sense of freedom — and chaos — that comes with a whole new set of habits. Most BU students aren’t used to having soft serve at their disposal 24/7. Busy schedules full of classes and clubs force students to eat at unconventional hours. Yet — after a few weeks of adjusting to the small plate sizes and numerous instances of asking, “Hey, wanna go to the dining hall?” — students start to fall into a rhythm and connect with the people around the table. 

“My roommate and I almost always have dinner together,” Parikh said. “And every weekend, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, we eat and debrief the whole night before.”

Making the time to enjoy meals with friends can offer a kind of replacement for family dinners left behind.

“Sunday dinner was always something special,” said Ella Patzer (Pardee ‘30). “Eating dinner with other people matters most to me.”

To preserve some sort of normalcy and forge a new ritual, Patzer and her friends have carved out a routine, making a tradition of getting dinner every Tuesday night before heading back to someone’s dorm to watch that week’s episode of Dancing with the Stars.

Campus will never quite replicate the comfort of home, nor will the dining halls replace family dinner tables. But if you are willing to look up from your plate of food and take a closer look at all the familiar (and unfamiliar) faces dining around you, you’ll see there’s a new kind of excitement: Everyone comes from different cities, different countries, and different histories of dinner traditions.