You walk into your house after a long day of intense lectures, take off your shoes and beeline it to the kitchen.

Opening the fridge, you can’t wait to see the bevy of delicious and fresh sustenance that awaits your consumption. But, not only is your fridge almost empty, the remaining food you do have is old, mouldy and starting to smell something fierce.

We’ve all been there before. Most important life lesson of second year: Food doesn’t stay fresh forever and your fridge doesn’t miraculously replenish itself with nutritious goodness. Having been spoiled by the cafeterias on campus in first year, upper-year students must come to the realization that they have to buy their own groceries and feed themselves. You can’t sustain yourself off of pizza pops and KD forever.

At first, taking time out of my day to make trips to Loblaws was simply annoying, but with more and more grocery buying experience, I have learned to actually love buying food—despite the fact that I have to drop $150 every time (another life lesson: food is expensive). Strolling through the various aisles is a delight as I imagine eating absolutely everything that I place in my cart and filling my fridge to relieve it of its dark, sad and empty state.

Yet, another great thing about buying food for yourself is knowing that you’ll eat through everything. You don’t buy any unpalatable or unfamiliar dishes (looking at you Leonard Caf), only delicious cuisine that you know you’ll gladly munch.

Some people hate taking the time to make meals, but I actually look forward to coming home and making dinner. There were bumps along the road; there were times where foods were undercooked, burnt, on fire, liquefied, gelatinous and sometimes just downright nasty, but with a little practice my cookery drastically improved.

Whipping up delicious pasta, preparing a fresh salad or throwing together a tasty stir fry is certainly not as hard as I had originally thought.

Who knew that in order to make a stir fry all you need to do is stir and fry?

All in all, being forced to buy groceries and making meals for yourself isn’t as bad as it seems. Second year has taught me that eating can be surprisingly rewarding. There’s nothing like appreciating a decadent meal that you prepared yourself. All this deliciousness can be yours too, just remember to buy your groceries and eat through them all before they go bad!