I got “FRESHMAN EATS” published on The Purple Wall on the first of the month. The site’s pretty unique — all stories go into a head-to-head bracket, competing for votes. On the 10th I won my first round, and you can read and help me advance (if you wish!) by clicking here.

Now, a few things of note. FIRST, the story is about 3,000 words long, and I’m super proud of it. It’s written in three different parts, the title is meant to be in all caps, every time, and I only wrote it because I kept thinking that “FRESHMEN EATS” would be a super funny name for a restaurant. So yeah, like “Jealousy Burgers,” it’s another story about food, though this one’s inspired by my time both as an undergrad and as a graduate student and college instructor.

SECOND, though The Purple Wall is super neat, most of the family members I’ve told about it have had a hard time figuring out how to vote. After you click on a story, you have to read to the bottom, and then click on a button to sign in. After that, you can vote, each day.

THIRD, if you’ve never heard of the term “semantic satiation,” it’s more or less when you hear a word/words over and over again until things start to sound funny. I think that was the overall goal of writing this — I tried to say “FRESHMAN EATS” as many times as I could in the work, until it took on a life of my own. So read it? See if that happens? Basically, FRESHMAN EATS is about a college on-campus restaurant that’s just a little off, much like when you hear a term too many times. So something is up, just because its name is FRESHMAN EATS? Pretty much.

FRESHMAN EATS! FRESHMAN EATS!

–Jeff