Most mornings, my two roommates and I have breakfast together. It’s a really nice way to connect with one another as our schedules don’t align very much throughout the day.
Here’s how it usually goes:
Riley and Grace (my roommates) naturally wake up an hour or so before I do. They get dressed and relax until they get hungry. I’m usually hungry right when I first wake up, so they wake me up right before we leave to go downstairs.
We leave our room about two minutes after I wake up. I usually just check my text messages really quickly and then leave.
Usually I’m a little groggy when I first wake up, so I just feel more confused than anything. Sometimes I start feeling anxious if I check the news right away, but I generally just feel neutral.
The dining hall is in our dorm building, so most of the time I just wear my pajamas to the dining hall. But I take my hair out of the ponytail I sleep in and either re-do it or brush it a little, and I always wear shoes and a mask. In the photo you can see that I keep flip flops right next to my bed. Because this happens within two minutes of me waking up, I generally don’t feel much different than I do when I first wake up.
The only full-length mirror is in the hallway on the way to the elevator, so every morning my roommates and I take a mirror photo. This makes me feel pretty good because it reminds me that I got lucky having roommates that I’m close with, and I’m excited to be able to look at all of these in a row at the end of the semester.
We take the elevator downstairs because it’s closer to our room than the stairs.
When we arrive at the dining hall area, there usually isn’t a line. I usually look at the menu posted outside to see what they have, but it’s pretty much the same thing every day.
This step makes me feel content, because I know what I’m getting.
Then, we have to sanitize our hands before we go in. The sanitizer dispenser squirts out way too much hand sanitizer, so Riley and I usually share. This is how we do it.
This step makes me feel good, because it’s nice to share. Looking back on it, it would make sense if the constant reminder of the pandemic would make me feel anxious or upset, but at this point I’m so used to it that it hardly feels strange anymore. Besides, coronavirus or not, it’s always good to sanitize before handling food.
After sanitizing, we have to scan into the dining hall. I use a contactless hand scanner, which actually does make me feel strange. Here’s how it works: I’m sure you can understand why this is definitely a little freaky. Though I must admit that it is extremely convenient to be able to essentially walk into the dining hall with absolutely nothing in my hands. I skip the fumbling to get the card back into my phone case and I’m here for it.
Then, it’s time to get our food. There usually isn’t a line to get it, but of course there are three of us. It’s buffet style, but not self-service, so one of the workers serves you what you ask for out of a tray into a Styrofoam container and hands it to you.
Sometimes, this step makes me a little stressed. There’s a glass barrier between me and the person working, and we wear masks, and the acoustics in the room are awful, and there’s occasionally a language barrier. All of these factors make it more challenging to hear and be heard, making ordering a slightly stressful experience.
There are also a lot of different options, and it’s also hard to make your order flow naturally without having to make the person working have to walk back and forth throughout the trays.
It’s also somewhat stressful when they hand the container to me, because they have to get it over the glass barrier, and I’m only 4'11'’, so I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach it. I’m always worried that I’m going to drop the container.
Luckily, the stressful part of the experience doesn’t last very long, and before we know it, we’re on our way back upstairs. We take the elevator because opening the door to the stairs is challenging when we’re carrying our food. This step makes me feel pretty neutral, as there isn’t a lot going on as we walk.
Then, it’s time to eat. All three of us sit in Riley’s and my room. Grace and I are on the floor, and Riley sits at their desk.
I usually also have fruit. If I don’t like the fruit at the dining hall, I have an applesauce cup from my fridge.
Eating the food with my roommates definitely makes me feel warm. We talk about our plans for the day and in general about our lives. We also decide at every meal whether the dining hall food that day was a “hit” or a “miss”, which is a fun tradition.
Riley (top) and Grace (left)
Overall, I really enjoy this activity, and it’s a really nice part of my day.
journey map:
Phase II:
I came up with a lot of nudge ideas, and they all fit into two “zones”.
Adding a risk: Waking up naturally without an alarm, waking up at the same time as Grace and Riley, eating the same thing every day, eating the same thing as Grace and Riley every day, getting breakfast somewhere besides Kins Dining, not using my phone until breakfast is over
Lessening risk: Bringing a bag down to the dining hall, planning a time to eat breakfast in the morning, trying to drink a full bottle of water during breakfast, adding tea to my breakfast, preparing my own breakfast
The nudge I decided to add was coming up with a time to eat with my roommates the night before. Usually, we just wake up naturally in the 8s, but twice a week I have classes at 9:00, so sometimes things end up being a little rushed. This is my sketch for my nudge.
This nudge is made of three micronudges:
- Plan with Grace and Riley at night before bed, and aim for a time to leave.
- Set an alarm for an appropriate time.
- Remember why I chose the time and don’t hit snooze.
I tested the nudge three times, and it worked pretty well. One morning, I had a test starting at 9:15, so we had breakfast at 8:45, and it went really well. Grace had a time to come into our room, and we had a perfect time for our alarm. The end of the meal didn’t feel rushed at all, and it was nice to not have to finish eating, say goodbye to Grace and Riley, and scramble for my headphones in the last twenty seconds before class starts.
I will say that it’s definitely hard to leave at that exact time. I yearned to go back to sleep right when I first woke up, and I kind of just wanted to go back to sleep or sit on my phone in my bed instead of getting up to go eat. I would think to myself “if only I had 10 more minutes” but after those 10 minutes I felt exactly the same.
It’s easier when I have a hard deadline and I’m trying to squeeze in breakfast before a class. One morning I knew I could be lazy since my 9:30 class was cancelled and it was so much easier to hit snooze and keep sitting in my bed. But the morning I had a test/class, I was ready to go.
As I continue to test my nudge, I’m going to try to stick to quick checks on my phone before breakfast, like my email instead of social media, which can be an endless scroll. I’ll also try to sleep until right before it’s time to leave, because then I’ll have no time to think about how sleepy I am and how little I want to leave.
Here’s my new journey map, where you can see where I yearned to be back asleep, and how quickly it dissipated. However, it’s a pretty strong urge to go back to sleep on the first one.
The positives of the new routine are in blue, and the yearning is in red.
Overall, this nudge is a net positive. I’m usually that tired if I wake up more than one minute before breakfast anyway, so the positives outweigh the negatives.
Changing the first few steps of the routine also changed the crusis of my routine to actually getting up and out of bed. (Previously, I identified the crusis as the moment I had the food in my hands in the dining hall), which I thought was really interesting.
When I researched this activity, I found out that in the Middle Ages eating breakfast was considered sinful for nobles (it felt gluttonous at the time) though laborers ate breakfast to fuel up for a long day’s work. However, when more people started working all day in the Industrial Revolution, breakfast became important and became more of a social gathering, which is what my roommates and I do. Breakfast became a quicker affair during the twentieth century with the development of cereal and toasters, but it is still an important cornerstone in our culture.
Then, I interviewed my mom, who went to college in the early 1990s about her breakfast habits during her four years at the University of Richmond in Virginia. She said she sometimes skipped breakfast and would instead opt for an early lunch from the dining hall. When she did choose to have breakfast, she didn’t use that time as a social time, usually choosing to grab a bagel from the dining hall and eat it in her dorm while her roommate slept.
However, while she was student teaching, she lived in an apartment, and her boyfriend cooked eggs for her before she left for work. During that semester, her breakfast routine was social.
My mom barely remembered her breakfasts in college when they weren’t part of a social routine, yet she spoke fondly of the social time she got with her boyfriend the semester they ate together. I personally thought of my breakfast memories from middle school and high school (where I usually ate in the car or on the bus) versus my breakfast memories from this semester of college.
Of course, I overwhelmingly prefer the memories of eating with my roommates. Before college, I didn’t think I was really a morning person, but I really enjoy eating with Grace and Riley every day even if it means I have to wake up a half hour earlier than I would.
I thought of how breakfast could be combined with socialization more naturally, and here’s what I came up with.
Breakfast spread daily in workplaces and classrooms: Workplaces and schools would stock breakfast foods (bagels, fruit, etc.) so it could be a communal meal with co-workers and other students.
Breakfast for pets in same aisle as breakfast for humans: Breakfast food would be in the same aisle as pet food, encouraging people to enjoy their breakfast with their pets.
National breakfast time: Programming on TV/radio at a certain time every day that encourages everyone to eat breakfast at the same time in the USA, possibly Zoom calls where you can talk with random people throughout the nation as you eat your first meal of the day.
“Breakfast hour”, similar to the dinner hour: It’s considered rude to call/schedule meetings between 6–7:00 PM, because that’s the dinner hour. If there was a breakfast hour, socialization would occur during that meal as well.
All breakfast foods come with other breakfast foods: One reason that breakfast is challenging to eat communally is that cereal or toast takes like five minutes to eat. If all breakfast breads came with a breakfast meat (or vegan alternative), or fresh produce, or a potato product, breakfast would feel like a meal instead of fuel needed to get through the day, creating that yearn to socialize.
I was most compelled by the national breakfast time idea, and I decided to storyboard it. I think that it could be really nice to talk to somebody in another part of the country, who lives a really different life. I think that establishing that breakfast would kick people’s days off with listening and socialization.
With this program, an American would make breakfast for themself, and log into a program. This program would then match them with another American who logged in at the same time- someone from anywhere else across the nation. This way, you two would enjoy your meal together, virtually, and talk until your twenty-five minute timer runs out or until you leave. This would reduce loneliness and establish connection throughout the country.
Closing
I think my breakfast routine is one of my favorite parts of the day, and I think that’s because it is a part of my routine that is truly shared. I really value that time with my roommates, and when I go home, I’m going to try to share breakfast with my brother or parents every morning. This really taught me how much I value that socialization, and that I’m much less introverted than I thought previously.
Breakfast is a part of the day that we have at similar times already, with similar foods and routines. If we push that shared routine a little more, it becomes a connection.
