All it takes is a hello. by Isabela

All it takes is a hello. by Isabela - June 2026 Scholarship Essay

After attending college for two years and going into my third year, if someone were to ask me what has been the hardest thing about adapting to college life I’d give them a simple answer: dining halls. Something they never mention to you in the college tours, or when an older person reminisces about the ‘best four years of their life’, they never mention the dining halls. More specifically, though, the choice you have to make: sit by yourself or contort your schedule to fit someone else’s simply to have an occupied seat across from you. There is a despicable lack of connectivity in very niche parts about college. I can promise you now, that the first time you sit by yourself in the dining hall might feel like the loneliest thing you’ve ever experienced. It doesn’t seem like something that would deeply affect you, but sitting there by yourself as you see everyone around you; as you others with a plethora of friends, it makes you question your worth. It does.
This is not to say that other parts of college are not equally as hard, but it’s just that this simple–basic need to eat– is so grossly overlooked. Your habits change, you will yourself to not be hungry, or to have dinner at 5 pm so as to miss the crowded-ness of it all. Nonetheless, it is something that you think about, every day, every time you have to enter those dining hall doors.
I don’t think this is a problem with just my college, in fact, I talked to a close friend of mine who went to a school in a completely different state and it was the same thing: the dreadiness that settles in your stomach when 6 pm rolls around and you don’t have any solid plans of who to eat with. It feels like such a privileged problem to have that it’s hard to even muster telling someone else about it. I can vividly remember my friend timidly complaining about it to me and this immense feeling of relief washed over me: ‘I wasn’t the only one’.
There’s no fix-all solution to this problem, but there are steps to take. Connectivity is the foundational one. If people don’t feel comfortable enough talking about this mundane problem, no solution would ever be found. We need to emphasize connectivity, but not only with our close friends, with anyone around. If we see someone sitting by themselves, eyes aimlessly wandering the crowds, ask them to sit with you. They may say no, they may say yes, but in that moment they feel important and that is all that matters. You don’t need to completely change someone’s life just to make them feel like a human being. All it takes is a hello.