~Brett Wohletz, Class of 2024

The importance of food

Turn your wounds into wisdom

~Oprah Winfrey

If you’re not challenged, you’re not trying. In the book How the Other Half Eats, by Priya Fielding, I was challenged to space out my work and read a lot in little time. Reading How the Other Half Eats challenged me to read a lot of my book ands to do a lot of work in a little amount of time. Saving all your work for the very last week is the worst thing you can do, but now I now that it is important to space out your work.

How the Other Half Eats was definitely a book I didn’t want to read, and I still didn’t think it was a fun read. I was highlighting different themes, and I started to notice a lot of desperateness throughout the book. There is one lady in the book who goes around asking families how food insecurity affects them, and often, the families are in poverty and barely have enough money to put food on the table each night. “She skipped meals just for her kids to eat, I mean sometimes, I eat a bowl of cereal because that’s something I can afford” (P.63). I was never really intersect in this book, but as the book went on, I found that this book will only benefit me for this project. 

I was filling out an organizer while reading this book and looking for good themes and quotes throughout the book. I couldn’t necessarily relate to any of the themes or quotes so this was a very interesting experience. Not every family has guaranteed food every night, and I realized this and it made me more compassionate towards the people who aren’t as fortunate as me. Seeing a perspective of people who have food insecurity was eye opening. This changed how I view the world because I’m not often around people with food insecurities, but now I know that this is a much bigger issue then I thought it was. 

Going into the book, I wasn’t enthusiastic, and I never really was, but I realized that putting your best foot forward and doing your best work is better then waiting until the last week and rushing through your work.

If you could remember one thing from this writing, it should be, “Give a damn and figure it out.”