My name is Damon. So, I would have to start from the first semester I came here. I'm an international student, so what I get paid is the only money that the university provides for me, it's my only funding. I cannot work anywhere else. Even if I have extra time, I can not work anywhere. Basically, I'm getting half of a minimum wage salary, and I have to survive on that. When I wanted to move here, I came from another university, then transferred to this university. When I started here, I kinda maxed out my credit cards. So, for the first three or four months, I kinda had to balance paying my debts, and eating. So I had two major issues, money for eating and money for my rent. I couldn't do anything with the money for my rent, so I had to cut off money from my food to buy things. When I came here, I didn't have anything, like I slept on the floor for a month. Then I bought a mattress, then I bought a bed, and then I bought a desk. Every time I had to buy something, I had to be like, "Okay... how am I gonna get that money?" Of course, I'm gonna eat less and I'm gonna buy some of that more essential stuff. Last month all my debts were paid off, so I'm free from that, and I have a little bit more money.

So I went to the university’s food pantry expecting it to be something like the previous one that I went to at the other university, but it was a little bit different. You could take as much as you want, which was not the case in the other one. But there was also less variety in Opportunity University’s food pantry. But the important thing was I got a bit of meat, I think. Right now I think all of the meat was mostly pork, and I don't eat pork, but, I found something that wasn't pork, so I took some meat and I took a cartoon of milk. And the bread was all like, dried up, so it wasn't very usable.  I also saw a jelly bottle there, which I remember, a green jelly, which I didn't know what it was. But I just said, "Let's take it, it might be useful."  Right now, I don't think I would go back because the stuff they had was not the stuff that I needed. I mentioned it was mostly pork, the bread was usually not edible because it was expired. The only things that I would take from the university pantry right now would be the milk that most of the time they don't have, eggs and maybe the canned peas. I mean sweet peas and green beans, which at the end of the day is $5 all combined, so I can buy them myself now. So right now, I don't know if I will go anymore. Other than that, everything was nice.  I was happy, at least I took a couple of things. I might have taken some snacks as well, you know, doughnuts or something. It felt nice that I went there and had some stuff to eat. I definitely said, "Okay, since I have a lot of food I can eat like an extra meal or eat breakfast that day with the stuff I got from the university pantry." But like I said, I usually don't eat breakfast.

I would say the most important factor in my eating habits is my time. I used to work three jobs before I came here to get my PhD, and back then I didn't really cook, but I managed my schedule in a way that I did all three jobs. I had two full-time jobs and one part-time job, so I scheduled my day in a way that first I do this one, then I do that, then I do this, and then I do that. With that schedule, I never had an opening for making food, so my mother made me food back then. I came here, now I want to have the same type of schedule. But if I made my schedule like that, I would also have to plan it, “okay, now you make food,” somewhere in there, which is a bit hard. Because I would have to stay at home to make food instead of going to my lab to work there, there's so many compromises. I have to think, “Okay, if I do this, I have to stay here for a little bit longer.” That means my other plan for my shift is 30 minutes to an hour longer. And if I eat, do I then feel too lazy or sleepy to come out, to come go to the lab? Will I waste my time? Am I wasting my time making food? I also like intermediate fasting. which is a diet. You eat for a fixed number of hours, I think the lowest is 12.

The good thing is that the food insecurity that I have does not affect my education experience. I don't think that it impacts me because I've been doing this for a while, and I feel confident enough in my studies and my work. So, I wouldn't say that it affected me that much in my abilities. Because some part of our work is research and you need a clean mind for your research. But there's these other thoughts that I have, these other concerns which are also anxiety inducing as well. It makes it hard to focus. Like if I have a task, they tell me, "Okay, you have to do this, this, this, and this," then it would be fine. In research it's not like that, sometimes you have to ask the question. And those times I'm not performing very well. If I already had a task or made up the task, it would be fine. It wouldn't impact my performance that much. But if I have to think about something, like making a new software way or something, it would affect my performance. If it was just connecting two parts or writing, or something like that, it wouldn't affect it that much.

An example of this was this one time I was working on a paper when I came here. After a while it was done, finished right. So I had to find something new to work on, but I also had to think about a lot of other things, for example "'Okay, what am I going to eat? Where am I going to sleep? How am I gonna manage my money and stuff."  It was very hard for me to say, "Okay, let's ignore all of those problems and just focus on what other path am I going to work on now? Like let's make a new research topic or let's work on a new project,” which meant that I didn't really move forward in making other new projects. I would say as an outsider in my academic area, it would seem like I have been doing nothing. I went to the lab, I came back, but no progress was made in that time. Every time I was thinking about them, I would say, "Yeah, maybe if I didn't have this to do, and all I would've focused on this thing and found the solution for this problem. But I have more urgent problems to fix, which I can't."  Some of those problems, you couldn't do anything about them.  You want to answer, you want a solution, so you just think, although there's no answer to some of them.