Last night, I attended a Varsity Student Athlete Advisory Committee (A.K.A VSAAC, which is a committee made up of varsity athletes at the school who do things to promote U of R varsity athletics and the like).
At the meeting, VSAAC's advisor, women's basketball coach Jim Scheible, made the announcement that he needed four representatives to attend the U of R's Athletic Hall of Fame Induction banquet on this coming Friday night.
Having trouble finding volunteers, Coach Sheible tried to present some incentives for people to go, such as that it is a yearly tradition of VSAAC to have representatives attend this dinner, and thus, if no one goes, it will not be a good reflection of the organization.
He also mentioned that by going, the four volunteers would receive a "free dinner" at the banquet.
Now, I already knew I could not attend the banquet as I am going to be away for the weekend and won't be on campus on Friday night.
But even if I could attend, the incentive that Coach Sheible presented would definitely not have convinced me to go. The second he mentioned that a "free dinner" was up for grabs, I thought of economics and cringed at his comment.
As we have learned in class, NOTHING is free. There is always some sort of cost in everything, whether it be a monetary, non-monetary, or opportunity cost.
In this case, the dinner may indeed be free in terms of money, but by no means is it actually free. Let's say I was around campus for the dinner. If I decided to go, I'd be giving up a few hours of my time to attend the event. Therefore, the cost of attending the dinner would be the time I am giving up by going.
Lately, I've had tons of homework to do and a number of exams to study for. When I am away this weekend, I am going to be doing a lot of homework and studying.
Thus, if I were available to go to the dinner and I did end up going, the cost for me would be a loss of time to put towards my studies.
Because I VALUE being prepared for my classes so as to have the best opportunity to get good grades, there would actually be a steep cost for me to attend the dinner if I was not going away for the weekend.
As much as I hate to say it for the well-being of VSAAC, I value being prepared for my studies much more than attending the dinner and getting a "free" dinner ("free" referring to not having to pay any money for the food.) Therefore, I definitely wouldn't have volunteered to attend the dinner even if I could because I'd be incurring such a significant cost by doing so.
For some people. the incentive of receiving a free monetary dinner might be an extremely attractive option, but for me, I value getting my school work done much more than getting a "free" meal, which explains why the "free" meal is not so "free" after all.
Indeed, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I have had a similar situation in the past. As you know I love to study the Torah- well, in the past I would get together occasionally with a person more knowledgeable than I am and study Torah with him, as he could teach me a lot. I didn't have to pay him anything, so I was essentially getting a "free" Torah lesson, right? Wrong. Because this person always wanted me to come to Shabbat dinners at his house often. And as you know, going out and socializing for a few hours is a burden and a cost to me, not a benefit. I would much rather have been alone doing homework or studying the Torah, but I felt guilty about not going to his Shabbat dinners after he graciously took the time to study with me. I wasn't forced to go to the dinners, but I felt guilty, and because of that I had to "waste" (for a lack of a better word) a few hours on some friday nights to be at the dinner instead of doing homework. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
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