In the front pocket of my backpack, there’s a little space dedicated to multiple pairs of disposable chopsticks I’ve picked up from who-knows-where. It’s one of the most strangely useful parts of my backpack, and I feel that more people should carry around chopsticks similarly.

In university, I’ve noticed that people are often carrying around food with them. They bring around their dinner leftovers. They bring around chips to accompany their late night study session snacking urges. They bring around whatever food they have for any reason, because it’s probably not worth making a trip home to drop it off in the fridge or cupboard. Some of these food-havers are my friends, which is great for me because they’re nice people and they all share their food B)

Fast forward until 11:00 PM. You’re all dazedly working to submit your assignment before 11:59 PM, but you might not have enough energy left to finish it in time. You feel drowsy. Maybe you just take the L and settle for a 50% on the assignment, but you also know it’s worth 10% of your final mark! Hope begins to slip further and further away.

Suddenly… FOOD!

Someone has food to share, and you’re all excited to eat something that’ll offer the final boost of energy everyone needs to pass their courses… but there’s a slight problem.

How do you eat chips while studying? You can’t just grab the snacks and then continue typing on your laptop, because that’s kind of greasy. You also can’t go to the washroom to clean your hands because that requires you to move a significant distance from your chair—a very questionable move given the nature of rapidly approaching deadlines.

But this difficult situation has never occured for me, because there are clean, unused chopsticks in my backpack (which I also share with my friends because I’m a nice person! :D ) that let me eat food without getting chip dust and oil all over anything else I touch.