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How do you get free food?
Everyone enjoys a contest, particularly when it involves winning a box of ramen noodles. ClassesandCareers.com is launching a new blog called College Life especially for university students and college students at heart. To kick things off suitably, they’re holding the Student Scavenger Contest 2009,which pushes students to submit as many ideas on how to get free or low-priced chow as possible. Whoever submits the most ideas will earn one $100 restaurant gift card, a $200 Walmart gift Card, and a case of ramen noodles.
They imagined up this insane contest one day while shooting the breeze about all the wild things we did during college to get three square meals a day. I used to go to fast food restaurants at closing time and offer the manager all the change I had in exchange for all the food they hadn’t sold that day. For $4.27, I could get two days worth of Big Macs, McRibs, french fries, and Quarter Pounders with Cheese. Depressing, yes. Desperate, definitely. But it makes for a terrific story later.
Another great one I heard of was a man who, discovering his pantry contained only a can of corn niblets and a little pile of dust bunnies, called his friends together for a potluck. He made certain to call the best cooks around. When the potluck came, he heated up his corn niblets, throwing in a small hunk of butter, which he borrowed from his roommate, for good measure. His friends brought lasagna, bratwurst sausages, and a score of other dishes. All went home full and content. Some even left some leftovers with our hero. And our hero lived to fight another day. Truly, he was a Student Scavenger, inventive, shrewd, and a tad bit unprincipled.
So that’s what this contest is all about: celebrating all the extreme things we resort to in order to get some sustenance when money is stretched. You can tweet your ideas or post them on Facebook as long as you link back to their blog. You can leave your ideas as a comment on their blog. You can even film yourself demonstrating your idea and post it on YouTube for a bonus. The most entries wins, with videos getting extra weight.
If you want to join the contest and win the honor of being a true Student Scavenger, visit the contest page to get started.
