Whats the most ghetto thing you've had to do/make/use bc you're a poor student?

[AccruedExpenditure]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
I wasn't on a meal plan, but as an RA, I was able to have picnics for my dorm, with the food supplied from the dining hall for everyone...
I had LOTS of leftovers; set my dorm fridge to freeze the stuff and ate hamburgs, hotdogs, chips, and brownies for over a month.

Then, when I ran out of food, I went home for a weekend, worked at the pizza shop, and took all the leftovers to school. (sort of like McD's, we kept cheese and pepperoni pizza fresh all the time, similar to their fries. If it got old, it got thrown out and fresh was made. But, if there was any to be thrown out, it went into a big box, destined for my fridge/freezer. Bad orders went too. Plus, leftover pizza at the end of the night... I ate pizza for lunch and dinner for 3 or 4 straight weeks as well.)

And now you have a doctorate in pizza. Excellent.

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire


Was I the only one who knew how to manage money as a college student?

- M4H

Some of us had no money to manage.

 

[Sqube]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire


Was I the only one who knew how to manage money as a college student?

- M4H

Actually, it was more like I never had money to manage in the first place. Try stretching out ~$400 for a school year and you'll get to feeling mighty broke.

 

[Mermaidman]

-I didn't want to pay $$ for freshman chem lab coat, so I cut one out of an old piece of vinyl.

-Couldn't afford a dining table, so I placed a board on a milk crate; sat on the floor.

-My only TV was an ancient BLACK & WHITE K-Mart brand TV!

 

[Muse]

I made my own wine from the plums growing outside. Baked bread zillions of times. I can cook almost anything, and probably have. I once didn't eat anything for 6 days just to see what it was like. I was once down to my last $2 or so and walked around with that $2 in my pocket for a couple of weeks.

 

[neutralizer]

Wow, I'm not nearly that poor in college I guess. I do note the free printing areas at the school and take advantage of the fact that my CS account doesn't count print quotas properly. Recently, I've run out of food at the apartment and I've resorted to eating cheap take-out.

 

[Rastus]

I remember 5 guys sharing rent in a 3 bedroom apartment. First day in, someone cooked something that was aweful. We didn't eat it so it went into the fridge. There it stayed for about a year and a half, constantly growing. There was never anything else in the fridge but beer, half of a gallon of milk that was almost as old as THE leftovers, and an empty bottle of ketchup.

Most of us slept on the floor for a while. The coffee table was a wire spool. The couch and a ratty easy chair were acquired on the side of the road where they were discarded. Other furniture was acquired in similar ways.

But, we did have a nice stereo.

I'm not sure we even ate during that time.

 

[Tiamat]

I had to eat icecream with chopsticks. Getting the icecream out of the half gallon box was kind of tough, but in the end, i prevailed!

 

[Leros]

I had some ramen noodles, but no silverwear. I ended up using 2 pens as chopsticks.

 

[AlgaeEater]

Not proud of it, but I always take A LOT of public utility items.

Examples?

Toilet paper from bathrooms
Towels/Napkins from cafeterias
Salt/Pepper/Ketchup/Mustard/Hot Sauce/Plastic Utensils from Cafeterias

Whenever I need pens or pencils, I go to the office buildings and pretend to fill out forms for something, and then just leave halfway with the pen they give me. Campus job fairs too, I also raid anything that's free on the tables without one lick of interest on what those people are talking about.

I usually beg for scantrons/bluebooks whenever classmates are generous enough, and I rent textbooks from the library whenever possible. All these little things add up.

 

[KingGheedora]

I survived an entire week eating nothing but spaghetti (ketchup and parmessan cheese), and drinking juice which was made from margarita mix concentrate and water (it's a syrup you're supposed to add water, ice, and alcohol to). I had this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was a very enjoyable week in my life actually.

I once made rice in the rice cooker and sliced up a banana onto the rice because I had nothing else to eat it with.

In college I mostly survived on hot dogs, ramen, tuna, spaghetti and rice.

 

[slackwarelinux]

I was taught to rip apart the lid of cardboard pizza boxes so they could be salvaged as temporary plates.

 

[Ronstang]

I never did anything ghetto when in college. I worked a good job and had a side business of my own and made more money than a lot of grads did right out of school. Me and my buddy went out to real restaurants after work every night if we were not cooking a decent meal.

 

[KingGheedora]

Showed up to work on payday without enough money for the train ride back. Had to cash the check to get home.

Drank vodka + koolaid before going out, also vodka + gatorade.

Borrowed textbooks from a friend and photocopied all the chapters we'd be reading for class so I wouldn't have to buy the books.

 

[TraumaRN]

Perhaps least ghetto person on here...

I own a car that is barely 4 years old. I've always had the proper utensils, shampoo, etc etc. Actually....never had a problem with money. That might be because I have most of my schooling paid for in scholarships/grants and work at a job that nets me 25-30K at year


Tho after reading this thread I wish I was ghetto at some point in the last years

I mean, I have 3 dozens beers and a mini keg in my fridge, plus a fifth of tequila and fifth of Crown. But heck, lunch today was Mongolian BBQ so yea.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Ramen Noodles.

/thread.

 

[iliopsoas]

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Ramen Noodles.

/thread.

my gf ate nothing but ramen noodles with soy sauce for months at a time because she was so broke while in med school

 

[Fenixgoon]

i havent run into financial problems.... yet

i eat well though - $20-30/week gets me lots of deli meats for godly sammiches

 

[mesthead21]

Im doing alright, i have a decent job, and work enough hours to keep up on the money situation. Walmart is my new best friend though.

 

[outerheaven]

I went through a statics class without buying the book and passed. Everyday I just sat next to someone and just read out their book.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

Our bookstore's cashiers didn't ring up books with the UPC bar code. Instead, they manually entered the price that was on the sticker. All one had to do was carefully swap stickers from cheap books to the pricey ones.

But I don't know anyone who's ever done that. Honest.

 

[LordMorpheus]

TV stand = box TV came in filled with cardboard (roommate bought the TV).

Couch = modular thing held together with staples and duct tape - free.

Desk = door found in garage of leased house thrown on some sawhorses, also from the garage.

Another TV stand = two stacks of bricks with some 2x4's across.

Door = curtain on shower curtain rod, at a weird angle so anchored with old bricks.

Dinner = peanut butter on bread / nutella on bread / just bread for two weeks (Power was out and the company took forever to fix it. I basically lived in one of the campus computer labs for the whole time.

 

[Mermaidman]

Originally posted by: AlgaeEater
Not proud of it, but I always take A LOT of public utility items.

Did you eat algae?

 

[Guido06]

Originally posted by: HN
back in the dorm days, i couldn't buy a clapper, so i made this

That is great.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I dropped out of college in 2000 (at the end of my sophmore year), however, For about 6 months I used a cardboard box as a computer desk...
I also drank everclear mixed with RC Cola (Cheaper then Captain and Coke) as well as some of the cheapest and most vile Vodka's sold in American Liquor stores.
I stacked a minitower case on top of a midtower case because I had picked up some really really really old 5 & 1/4 inch 9GB "full height" SCSI drives for really really cheap, and the midtower could only hold one of them, and I was afraid the 250watt Power Supply would be overstressed (I used the 165 watt AT Power Supply from the Minitower to power 3 of the drives.)

I used to have a picture of the PC somewhere, but I can't find it any more ... it was frickin ugly.














That being said, I wasn't really "ghetto."
I had a decent stereo reciever (Pioneer DD5.1) with some old floorstanding speakers for F, R, LR, RR channels, and a cheapo center channel.
I had a 27inch TV. I had a PC with a DVD-Rom Drive (and it had S-video out so I could watch DVDs on the "bigscreen" 27inch.)
I had 2 computers, one was a Celeron 300A running at 464mhz with 128mb of ram. (with a 19inch CRT)
The other was an AMD K6 233 with 64 MB of ram (and a 13inch CRT, this PC (my linux box at the time) was on my"box desk." The box was from the 19inch CRT.)
My car ran pretty good, I never missed a bill or a payment on either of my 2 credit cards or on any utilities.

That being said, I was working 30+ hours while in college, and during the summer, I'd work around 60 hours or more if I could.




EDIT:

Originally posted by: slackwarelinux
I was taught to rip apart the lid of cardboard pizza boxes so they could be salvaged as temporary plates.

Two things.
1. Slackware is awesome
2. I did that too, mostly because we didn't have a dishwasher in the apartment.