It’s 6:30 p.m., and my roommate and I finally make it to the dining hall to eat some pretty awesome food. We take a quick glance at the menu on the flat screen TV (so that’s where our tuition’s going) and don’t pay attention to any of it. While making our way to the pasta bar, we smell it; that delicious, oregano, tomato-pureed goodness. We speed up our pursuit, and approach Friday night dinner option number 1: spaghetti. Of course, we take two plates each, and smother on the knockoff Ragu. We quickly find a booth, and sit down to dive into our ‘authentic’ Italian cuisine. I take a bite, and though the pasta fantastic, there’s something tastes a bit off. No, it’s not overcooked, and I don’t think they used too many spices. I just can’t seem to put my finger on the imperfection.

Then, struck by its obviousness, I realize the problem: it’s not my mother’s spaghetti.

The dining hall’s spaghetti, shockingly, was not made by my mom. This is ridiculous, completely absurd. How could such a prestigious university do such a thing?

A wise artist once said that mom’s spaghetti was the only kind of spaghetti one should ingest, unless that individual were about to make a life-changing performance, in which case they would promptly vomit. Just a side note, when is the last time any of you lovely people had an M&M?

Home-cooked meals are the best, and, as privileged college students, we should only be served the best food. Yes, we deserve to have handmade pasta and freshly smashed tomatoes with organic basil; we need to be happy and healthy to be at our best, or at least that’s what Buzz the Bee taught us. So, colleges and universities across the U. S., why are you not serving students the quality spaghetti they deserve?

Sure, you feed us, and I guess you teach us too, but we are the highly intellectual citizens that will be running the nation in just a few short years. Our generation should be treated like royalty to live up to our societal expectations. Home-cooked meals, seven-figure salaries, and personal Instagram photographers are just a few things that we should be entitled to, if we are expected to deal with the future state of our society. We need incentives. Clearly, due the frequent accusations of laziness and lack of motivation, we should be given the easiest path to integrate into the adult world. We’ve been treated like children our whole lives, why shouldn’t we be treated as such for the duration of our working lives?

…Readers, I hope you caught the sarcasm.

Really, this isn’t a preposterous request. All we’re asking is for you, older generations and educators, to give us what we need to make it to adulthood. We need help. Period. But if you want us to learn how to run the world, let us experience the world for ourselves. We don’t need to be babied. We need experience. We need to know what it’s like to live independently, without the help of our parents. Yes, we want constructive criticism. No, we don’t want all our classes to be easy. Yes, it would be nice if we knew how to do our taxes before we’re 21. Frankly, we just want to live our lives, our way. We don’t want you to run it for us.