We’ve all been there — you’re slaving away, assignment after assignment, when you realize: There’s an essay due by tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. that you completely neglected up until this point. Clocking in at 11:45 p.m., you’ve been sitting in the same womb chair since 3 p.m. (after shoveling down a bagel sandwich from the Union, post-midday lecture) — it’s now time to head down to Mom’s for that glorious cup of java fuel to get you through the next hour and a half.
As you trudge down the stairs with a heavy heart, you anticipate the first sip of that hot, delicious beverage to give you the brain boost you need to knock this essay out of the park, as well as to keep you from melting into a complete puddle of tears. You identify this cup of coffee as your beacon of shining light at the end of tonight’s long, dark tunnel of academia. You select the French Vanilla blend, add cream and just a pinch of sugar, pay and head back upstairs. You settle in, open a new Word document and prepare to create literary history. You take the first, delightfully anticipated sip from your warm cup and are immediately flushed in a wave of bitter disappointment, accompanied by the salty after-taste of what can only be described as your hopes and dreams being crushed under the weight of an unjust world.
I may have slightly exaggerated in that last section, but Mom’s Cafe really needs to revamp their coffee selection and presentation. Don’t get me wrong — I love Mom’s as much as the next stressed, overly-caffeinated, hyperglycemic student. Its prime location, quick and easy service and decently-priced options makes it one of the hottest spots on campus for students to grab food and drinks. They’re open later than almost every other store on campus, which is great for aforementioned late-night study sessions.
Those students looking for a cheap, low-calorie energy drink with mild health benefits (read: coffee) are not in luck, however. While Caffe Ibis, the brand used by most of the Dining Service hubs around the U, is a great coffee, Mom’s samples do not do it justice.
It may be due to the inconsistency of the brew (too strong or too weak, depending on how and when it is made), or the containers in which the coffee sits each day, the storage and state of the actual beans, or perhaps the temperature of the water when the coffee is brewed (burnt coffee can add bitter after-tastes). I can’t tell you how it happens — all I know is that it happens. This coffee doesn’t even have the bad, watered-down taste of most poorly-made coffee we know and love (i.e. 7-Eleven, any hotel breakfast station or what you experience if your parents are trying to save beans and use the same ones for the batch immediately following the first of the morning). Instead, it’s more of a bitter, rough, overly-acidic solute attempting to mix well with your stomach acid.
Every so often, if you’ve worked hard and said your prayers, you’ll have created a decent mix of creamer and sugar to somehow mask the sad aftertaste. On most occasions, however, you’ll be halfway through a mediocre paper, wondering why you spent the energy going downstairs to grab this concoction of despair, when you could have continued procrastinating on Facebook or by reading The Utah Chronicle.
So, Mom’s: Thank you, sincerely, for providing your library-dwelling students with the option of nourishment past 5 p.m. — you’ve saved many of us from hunger pains. All I ask is that you seriously take into consideration the quality of your brew. I would suggest putting a few extra minutes into the making of it each day, perhaps trying out a new brand or even investing in an industrial-sized Keurig and charging for each K-cup. For us hard-working pursuers of higher education, our professors and the staff of the U, without good coffee, there can be no college.