Following is the email sent to the new study break chairs of 2006: (from the old study break chairs of 2005)

Dear Dian, Shridda, and Xiumin,

Congrats on being the new study break chairs!

So, as one of your former study break chairs, I feel compelled to give you as much advice as possible (since it would have been helpful to Connie and me if our former study break chairs gave us advice too). So I’ll just give you a brief description on what study breaks we had, with details such as type of food, amount of money spent, and how long the food lasted.

So, as you know, you are responsible for at least one study break a month and for breakfasts during finals week. Anyway, here’s what we did:

February 2005:

We ordered about $500 worth of party trays from Picantes Mexican grill. We requested that they cut the rolls, wraps, etc. into at least two pieces or so. I think we got drinks, cups, plates, and utensils from either LaVerdes or Star. However, the food only lasted about 6 minutes. (Our first try though…)

March 2005:

Pi Day study break… with pie. We bought a bunch of pies from Star, baked the ones that needed to be baked, and had a big “Happy Pi Day” cake, bought from Star (call in advance… we got half chocolate and half yellow cake). Spent about $300-400. I would probably not recommend doing this again since it was a big pain in the butt to bake everything (not enough ovens and too much time) and the food ran out pretty quickly (about 15 minutes). Again, drinks, cups, and utensils bought from LaVerdes.

April 2005:

We ordered food from Cinderella’s (large trays) and a lot of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (online, which is really expensive, but we had surplus money). We spent close to $1000 on this study break. (Drinks and cups from LaVerdes.) It did last for almost 2 hours though. (And we did get lots of compliments.)

May 2005:

We didn’t have a study break since we provided breakfast. And plus, the housemasters, GRTs, and the RAAs already put on the breakfast study break, massage study breaks, and the finals study breaks. We went to Star and bought food every day for the next day’s breakfasts. We spent about $100-$150 on each breakfast, which wasn’t enough, since the food ran out pretty quickly. We also tried to get the food ready by 8am (since finals started at 9am).

September 2006:

Ice cream study break! As you may or may not remember, we surveyed the whole dorm about flavors. We ordered the big tubs of ice cream from Marietta from Bon Appetit (the people who provide our dinners in the dining hall) for $50 each (which is really cheap). We bought miscellaneous flavors of ice cream, toppings, syrups, cones at Star. The study break came out to about $300-400 and lasts quite a while (we never finished the ice cream).

October 2006:

We bought food from Chili Duck (which is Thai food). The lady there wasn’t very negotiable with prices, and the food turned out to be mostly vegetables. The price of the study break was close to $1200, and the food was okay. We had lots of vegetable leftovers, which we stuck in the McCormick lobby.

November 2006:

Mike’s Pastries! We bought lots of pastries, cookies, and pies (which came out to about $400). The people there are very nice and even gave us a really nice discount (they charged us $1 per pastry instead of $1.50). We ordered about a week in advance and they had it ready for us when we arrived. The pastries ran out really quickly (we ordered 200 of them) because a lot of people took one of every type, so I might suggest putting a limit of how many you can take (since it’s not fair to other people). The food ran out in about 15 minutes.

December 2006:

Festivus 2006… so you guys are in charge of the food. We bought lots of cookies, holiday foods, deli trays, bread, two cheesecakes from the Cheesecake Factory, and a cake that said “Happy Festivus” from Star. And Mike’s Pastries (again). I think the total came to about $500-600 (for everything).

Finals breakfasts… since it was a hassle to go to Star everyday, we discovered the wonder that is Peapod, peapod.com. It’s an online grocery store. We bought all the food from there, had it delivered the night before, stuck all the food in the country kitchen. I had bought the utensils from Sam’s Club when I went home over Thanksgiving break. Each breakfast cost about $150-200, since we had extra money left over. We also emailed the dorm for requests, and filled most of them. We got muffins, bagels, cram cheese, pita pockets, waffles, lots of fruit (there are fruit platters available from peapod), and lots of other things. It was hard to toast anything since we didn’t have a long enough cord to reach the outlet. But overall, we didn’t really run out of food too quickly (don’t forget to get lots of drinks. People seem to drink more chocolate milk than regular milk).

We requested about $3500 each term (you can also rollover funds from the previous semester to the next semester). Hope all that information was helpful. Don’t forget to send out nice flashy emails and maybe post up some posters at least a week before the study breaks.

If you have any more questions, you can send me or Connie an email!

Good luck and have fun!

Sincerely,

Julie