Master's student Department of Sociology Stanford University
Being
at Stanford is like being in a big cozy bubble. If you’re an undergraduate,
food is served to you hot in the Dining Halls, and even if you’re
a graduate student, you can just stop by the nearest Safeway or
go to Andronico’s using Stanford’s free shuttle system to buy some
ready-made delicatessen-type food. A bit pricey, but it’s all for
the convenience andthe taste.
So being
in this bubble, I had never had the urgent need to go to Costco. Costco
is a gigantic wholesale chain that sells everything from electronics to
pet food. And in massive quantities. Being unfamiliar with Costco, I decided
to just give it a try the other day…The first thing that struck me was that Costco was BIG. It was literally a storage warehouse turned supermarket. There were hundreds of aisles packed with gigantic quantities of products that rose up to the ceiling. Just the sheer size amazed me. “Wow,” I marveled, “I’m definitely in the United States.” I must admit that I was quite excited at first, but as I stumbled through the endless aisles of food, I began to wonder how people consumedpeanut butter the size of a basketball or ice cream twice the size of my head. Wouldn’t you be eating peanut butter and ice cream until you drop?
Plus, where do they store all this?? There would be no way that anything at Costco would fit into our refrigerator at home unless we cleared out what’s in it already… but then our house would have nothing but ice cream, peanut butter, and milk. That’d be it. Even the toilet paper we bought (which was a 36-roll value pack) hardly fits into our bathroom cabinet unless we go through the tedious task of dismantling the toilet paper packaging, separating the rolls individually, and placing them in every nook and cranny we can find.
There is no reason why you would need to buy 3 pounds of cream cheese and 5 gallons of milk. Well, at least for the average Stanford student. I know
that row houses at Stanford (residences where students have to cook theirown meals) utilize Costco, but that’s understandable, since there are 50 hungry residents who have to be fed. But otherwise, I think I’ll just stick to being the average Stanford student in the Stanford bubble. At least I’ll be eating healthily and a variety of foods that way.
