ON ANTS AND GRASSHOPPERS

As part of my compensation at work, I get a meal plan. And while it sounds good, getting $1250 a semester or so to spend, I don't use it as often as I probably should. Since it carried over from last semester, I have about $1000 to spend with three weeks to go.

Previous years - when the meal plan was different - found me with about $150 left at this time of the year, which I would spend on Gatorade or Powerade or something to get me through the summer. As mentioned previously, I am a firm believer in deferred gratification, so this was nothing new. But to have a thousand dollars or so - that's just an embarrassment.

A fellow RD has almost run out of money. He spent it on late-night snacks, as well as buying meals for friends and strangers throughout the year. As he is way short on funds, I have been buying lunches for him for the past two or three weeks, and I am glad to do so. I can't help but think of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, though - the ant saved up supplies for winter, the grasshopper partied with all his grasshopper friends all year, and then - come winter, he had nothing. The kindly (and likely handsome) ant took in the grasshopper and they did whatever it is insects do all winter together and the grasshopper learned a valuable lesson - spend freely, because someone else will take care of you when things get hard.

Wait, what?

It may seem like I'm bitter toward the grasshopper in that story, and I don't think I am. I do believe in forethought and planning ahead, but have been known to take it too far.

Continuing my deferred gratification examples, I have something like 33 vacation days, and 35 sick days to use at some point. If and when I leave this school, I get paid for the vacation days but not for the sick days - so why don't I use them on days when I don't feel like working? A friend assured me that if she worked at a job with sick/vacation days, she wouldn't stockpile them like I have, which is fine. She's a grasshopper, and truthfully a world of all ants and no grasshoppers would be pretty dull, just as a world with all grasshoppers and no ants would be pretty chaotic. Yet I cannot deny my ant nature, and so rarely use sick days, even when I am sure I have brain ulcers.

All of that having been said, I placed an order today for ten cases of water and twelve cases of different sodas...total cost to my meal plan: $722, leaving me with more than enough to get me and few grasshoppers through the last few weeks of school. So suck on that, Aesop.