Personal Hack

Just as a forewarning, I’m not sure that I fully understand the terminology of what a hack is and if my situation really counts as a hack. I know that doing things that fastest and most efficient way is usually preferred, but I have a (probably very strange) enjoyment in doing things the long or tedious way. 

One example that does come to mind though is when I lived in a residence hall on campus that didn’t have a kitchen or kitchenette. Essentially there was no stove and nowhere to cook food. It normally wasn’t a problem since we lived right above a dining hall. However, there was a break that we were allowed to stay in the residence halls, but the food was very limited because the dining halls were mostly closed since there was hardly anyone on campus. 

I was hungry and I had pasta. I had a water boiler that would make water boil very quickly (within minutes). I decided to try cooking pasta in the water boiler. However, my water boiler turns off as soon as the water starts to boil, so I had to continue to turn the boiler on while the pasta was cooking to keep the water hot. 

I think that the hack worked particularly well, but the pasta did absorb a lot more of the water than I had expected, so cooking it in smaller quantities would probably have been better. It was also very hard to clean the water boiler up. Using the water boil allowed me to make food and utilize the resources that I had despite lacking a stove (which is traditionally necessary for preparing pasta). It certain ways it made the process easier, but in other ways it made it harder. 

It was interesting to see how doing a familiar process in a different way allowed me to learn more about the process of cooking pasta (e.g. that the pasta absorbed a lot of the water). My mom thought that this story was a very classic example of the stereotypical stories of college life.