It’s 1 p.m. on a Saturday. It’s raining outside. I’m sitting alone in the corner of the Burbank Drive Taco Bell.
I’ve counted all the times I’ve sworn I would never come back here, traded them in at the local “If I Had A Nickel” machine and spent my earnings on a chalupa meal.
Wrappers are rapidly being made into balls and dropped on the table. Sour cream is dripping onto the tray and swiftly absorbed by too-thin napkins. My stomach is rumbling, gradually reaching its point of saturation with regret.
As I stumble outside, I ring the bell and whisper something about this actually being the last time.
College students have to balance school, work and our shams of relationships on a daily basis. As if that wasn’t enough, every few days we’re reminded of our poor health by accidentally catching glimpses at the caloric information of the box-dinners we’ve been eating for dinner every night of the last month.
It had vegetables in it — it was supposed to be healthy!
We all, at least nominally, want to be healthy. But not many of us are willing to put the work into it.
In an ideal world, we would all be washing our apple slices down with three-times-purified water from our springs of choice. Unfortunately, we happen to live in an imperfect world — one of short lines, value menus and center-console change.
A 2013 study by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity found that fast food companies poured a whopping (pun intended) $4.6 billion into advertising in 2012. That’s a good few hours at your campus job, even on holiday pay.
But surely those petty endorsement methods don’t work on us educated college kids, right?
Picture this. You’re walking through the Student Union between your two most difficult classes and you notice the perfectly yellow cheese hanging out of the Big Mac. The divinely syrup-like ketchup. The real-meat-looking patty.
As tempting as it may be to get in line, take your number and chow down, think about the last time you did so. Think about the sounds your stomach was made and the disgusted looks from your classmates.
Maybe you would be better to wait out the extra hour for that sandwich at home.
Fine, maybe we eat unhealthily, but it’s still okay as long as we exercise, isn’t it?
Sadly, health doesn’t really work that way. You can’t just cancel out a McDonald’s meal with a guilty conscience and a few jumping jacks.
But let’s just say you could.
A lot of us are so busy we can’t even remember our own names most of the time. Are you really going to run a mile at 2 a.m. after coming to terms with the fact that you’re going to fail your test today?
Probably not. But maybe you could fit a few UREC visits in on your downtime on campus. It is there for a reason.
All right, now let’s talk about the big one: alcohol.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, in a 2012 study, 24.6% of people 18 or older said they had binge drank in the past month. This might be fun while you’re consuming Buffalo Wild Wings by the ton, flooding into Tiger Stadium or flopping off the night bus to your favorite bar.
But how about the next morning?
You may not like it, but your liver is, hopefully, there to stay. So maybe next game day you should do it and yourself a favor by switching to water a little earlier than usual.
The odds, as well as the dollar-off burger coupons, may be stacked against us. But we can prevail. Take some time out of your day to think about what you can do to improve your well-being. And then actually do it.
I’ll be working alongside you in a minute. I just have to throw away this bag of chips first.
Ryan Monk is a 21-year-old chemical engineering senior from Lake Charles, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @RyanMonkTDR.

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Raegan Labat

Customer picks through a table of fresh tomatoes at Red Stick Farmer's Market.