Final Draft why we eat episode #2

The podcast discusses the eating culture at Notre Dame, specifically focusing on the differences between the eating habits of guys and girls. Guys at Notre Dame tend to have a designated table in the dining hall where they eat together, fostering a sense of camaraderie and the opportunity to meet new people. On the other hand, girls at Notre Dame prefer to eat with their closer friends and plan their meals together. While both guys and girls enjoy the social aspect of eating, girls tend to prioritize spending time with their friends and catching up on their day. Overall, the eating culture at Notre Dame is similar for both guys and girls, with slight variations in how meals are planned and who they are eaten with. Hello everyone, welcome back to episode number two of Why We Eat, the podcast that dives into eating culture at Notre Dame and looks into the decisions we make and why we truly eat. In this episode we are diving into the differences between eating habits of guys and girls at Notre Dame. I am here with one of my roommates Jason and another one of my good friends Rylan. You guys want to introduce yourself? Hi everyone, I'm Rylan Fax. I'm a sophomore at McGlynn Hall and I'm a mechanical engineer. Hi guys, I'm Will's roommate Jason. I'm from Ballmer Hall and I'm a computer science major who's also a sophomore. Yeah guys, thank you for being here. Jason, if real quick we can just start out by talking about just a rehash of what we talked about in the last episode but the eating culture of Ballmer and just eating culture for guys in general. If you could describe it in a few quick sentences, how would you? Yeah, the eating culture of Ballmer is awesome. In the dining hall, most Ballmer guys sit at this table that's at the very end. We call it the Ballmer table and oftentimes I'll just go to the dining hall by myself and find many of my fellow buccaneers sitting at the table and I'll just grab my food and go and join them and just eat with either some of my closest friends or some new kids in the dorm that I've never really met before but honestly there's almost someone always there for me. Yeah, I can agree with that a lot. I think one of the great things about the eating culture at Notre Dame and Ballmer specifically is the open table aspect of it. You can always go into the dining hall, find someone new to eat with and eating is a very social thing for us. So Rylan, I'm going to ask you the same question but do you think there are any distinct differences between the eating culture at McGlynn or just for girls in general at Notre Dame? I think for girls in general there's definitely less of a dorm table. We tried at the beginning of the year, our presidents did, to have a McGlynn table but I think everyone's pretty set in their habits and I want to eat with my friends and so what we do is we tend to plan what time we eat together so we'll coordinate a time and then that's how we'll plan out our evenings which is very different from Will and Jason who will show up whenever they're hungry and they plan, like their pre-planned is where they sit versus our pre-planned is what time we eat at and I just feel like it's, for me I enjoy having the time, taking the time to eat with my friends I haven't seen all day versus eating with random people in my dorm as opposed. Yeah, that's super interesting, that makes a lot of sense. Do you think that that is true for many girls Notre Dame, just girls in general or is that more of a McGlynn or you're a friend group in particular type of deal? I think it's every girls dorm, there's never, there's not a girls dorm that I know of that has a table that they all sit at. Yeah. I think there's, we tend to sit in the same like relatively area but I think that it's definitely a greater trend for guys dorms, like there's a Pangborn table, there's at North Zion Hall, there's a Keenan table, a Steads table, it's very much more common for guys to have a table with their dorm versus a girl. So we again tried to at McGlynn have a table in the beginning of the year and it just never stuck because everyone just eats with their friends. Yeah, that makes total sense and I guess Jason, throwing this one back to you, we had talked about how the bomber, the bomber table is a big sign of the camaraderie, the culture of the dorm and Rylan had mentioned how her group maybe prefers to eat just with their closer friends. Do you think that you are less close with certain people because you're eating with the broader dorm as a whole or do you think this is something that brings you closer to everyone? I never think it's an opportunity to meet new people that I wouldn't have more conversations with elsewhere but I do think I'm still close with especially my roommates and people on my floor because today for example my roommate and I, another one of my roommates, we were in here we were saying that we're both hungry so we went to the dining hall together but we didn't just talk with one another because we sat at our table and ended up talking with two other freshmen and one junior that was there so we still were in like a mixing pot of other bomber guys but I still went there with one of my closer friends and had a meal with them. Yeah, that makes total sense. I think eating in general for everyone is always a very social thing like sometimes I go to the dining hall, I'm not even that hungry, I just want to go and talk to people. Yeah, exactly. We do that. Yeah, would you say, Rylan, this is for you, that because you're eating with a smaller group of people that like just going to the dining hall for a social event is as common or is it more so like the pre-planned meals you had mentioned? No, I definitely think we would go just for social hours, we call it, like we will go, say four of us will go at the beginning and then as we eat we'll stay for another wave of girls to come and we'll see other friends that we, and they'll sit down with us. It's definitely, if we want it to be an over an hour event to socialize, like it very much can be and it is very often. We also like love to eat breakfast or lunch or dinner with random people that, like random ones are our friends that happen to be in the dining hall, like we'll have brunch with some bomber guys or some of our alumni friends if we just happen to run into them and that's totally normal but we, like at least three of us I would say tend to go together, like out of the group of 12 consistently for a meal. Okay, yeah, Jason, I know you wanted to add on there. Yeah, I also think it would be really interesting if we could see the average time spent at dining hall compared to guys and girls and just compare those metrics and see like how that would actually correspond to one another. Yeah, for sure that would be super interesting because I can speak from my own experience, sometimes I'll go to the dining hall and spend an hour and a half there, not even eating, just talking to people, especially at dinner because you're seeing people for the first time all day, you want to talk about what's going on and that's something that I find, that's why I like being with such a big table, so many new people, because there's so much to talk about. I will say though, Rylan, if you want to add on to this, there are definitely some advantages to more of a scheduled pre-planned meal. You kind of feel like you're always knowing what your friends are up to, maybe you're more connected in that way, can you speak to that at all, like what advantages, like what positives do you see with the way McGlynn kind of, the eating culture in McGlynn, if you will? Well, I mean I don't have a lot of classes with a lot of my friends, so I don't see them throughout the day, I don't necessarily have the same lunch breaks or get up with, I don't even get up with my roommates, so it's nice if I haven't, like I haven't seen them in a while or want to catch up on their day or their week, I get to make a plan beforehand about what time they're going to eat or what time we both can eat and catch up with them then. We also, just as much as we eat in the dining hall, we spend time in our section lounge and socialize and eat there. Every week my section in McGlynn has s'mores at nine o'clock on Tuesdays before, so that's really fun. Our friend group normally goes, Noah's in the section, but also we talk to our RA and other freshmen in our section, so our events don't just tend to be talking in the dining hall, but when they do, it's nice to be prioritized when I want to see my friends. I think I really enjoy that. Yeah, Jason, you want to add on here? Yeah, to go off of that, there are some times where I won't see some of my roommates for a while because I will not see them at the dining hall, so maybe like just going to bed or going to one of them, but talking about the section culture, we, I know Bomber and I know some other guy dorms also do section dinners where we go with our RA and have a section designated time to eat. I don't know about for girls or if that's a thing. We do have that. We had a lot freshman year. We kind of fell off this year with doing it, but it was really fun freshman year. Yeah, and I know you had mentioned that you have a lot of time spent with your friends eating in the lounges or outside of the dining hall. Do you think that girls spend less time in the dining hall and that's why like the table isn't as big or you think it's similar? No, I think we spend equal, if not more, time in the dining hall. We're not eating, but we definitely, like I've gone just to get like a drink instead of talking to friends, and I also think the time-wise it's relatively the same, but like when I'm in the dining hall I'm not just socializing with the girls I came in with. I'm again seeing friends that I haven't seen in a while, our guy friends, some of our girlfriends that go, that live in a different dorm, like we're seeing them and talk to them as they walk by our table, in line. It's definitely a social aspect of not just like people we're sitting with, we just happen to sit with those people and want to sit with them and talk to them at dinner. Yeah, I mean I think that makes total sense and from what I've really gathered from this conversation is, the eating culture is very similar in Notre Dame with guys and girls. The main differences may just come from the fact that girls may be more likely to plan something out, have a more set schedule when it comes to eating, and guys, like especially in Ballmer, we may go with the flow a little bit more. Definitely advantages to both sides, but yeah, I mean that's it for this podcast. Ryland Jason, thank you so much for joining today and the Why We Eat podcast family. I hope you will tune in next episode when we dive into the main differences between eating habits of student athletes at Notre Dame and normal people. Thank you once again and goodbye.