Cupboard Love

I am extremely food motivated. Food is usually the only reason I go to wedding receptions, baby showers, bridal showers, and other awkward social gatherings.

I will search high and low for free food on my campus if I forget to bring my lunch. And more times than not, I am successful at finding free lunches or baked goods. Sometimes both. It helps that I can sneak into a bunch of different meetings. I have weekly seminars that provide food every Friday. I pretended I was a medical student to get free BBQ. I signed up for a focus group just for free food. And I steal cookies on Wednesdays from a teacher that brings them in to class every week. Did I mention there's always free pizza at the international student club meetings?

The point here is that I will go out of my way to find free food. Back in January, I noticed a booth that said "Free lunch", so I naturally stopped by to figure out how to cash in on this offer. The booth was an advertisement for a Family Law symposium, and they needed papers to be presented at the conference. The lure to enter a paper was free lunch and free admission to the conference.

I am not a family health researcher. I'd much rather be dealing with something cool, like a genetic disorder or a weird disease.

Anyways, I decided that free lunch was worth entering a paper. I wrote it in a few days, and then turned it in just expecting a free lunch. I got a call a month later saying that they wanted me to present at this conference, and that they were offering presenters and sponsors free dinner. Free dinner, I thought. Sure, I'll present this paper for free dinner.

So, I had free dinner and free lunch from one paper. I thought I was doing pretty well. Then I got an email a month ago from the editors of Stance magazine, a pro-family student magazine run by BYU. They said that they really liked my paper, and want to publish it. I was sent the Senior Editor's comments, and I have everything edited except for my conclusion. Which I'm finding hard to write because I'm really not a family researcher. And the only part of the paper that I am really interested in is the nutrition section, because it deals with food (no surprise there).

So, this one paper that I wrote for free lunch has also turned into a free dinner, free admission to a conference, and a soon to be publication. Ah, the subtle comedy of life. I think this whole situation counts as one happy blunder.