Illustration by Taj Chapman/The Gazelle

I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I had an amazing Valentine’s Day. I spent most of my morning using Facebook Messenger’s magical new Valentine’s Day feature to send my friends gift-wrapped swear words. In the afternoon, I sat in my single bedroom and read haikus to my small but loyal army of 46 empty Al Ain water bottles. In the evening, I recycled them.

And at night, I’m ashamed to say — I brought a takeaway box back home with me.

It caught me during a moment of vulnerability. It began as every such encounter does: I waltzed into the dining hall; within the ten meters between the doors and the counters, I scanned every corner of the dining hall without turning my head in the slightest or making eye contact with anyone, like a nonchalantly awkward Ninja. That’s when I realized: I was surrounded by strangers.

I knew no one. No one knew me.

I had a choice to make: eat in the dining hall, all by myself, or take my food back and eat in my room — I’d still be alone, but no one would know.

“Be brave,” I told myself. “Celebrate your ascetic lifestyle.”

But then I saw the takeaway box — her foam soft and comforting to the touch, her pure white exterior burgeoning with possibilities — I broke down.

I do this a lot. In fact, I do it so much I could teach it as a Core class, or maybe even an applied mathematics course. Judging by the number of people that I see with takeaway containers on my way to D2, I can guess exactly how many people there are in the dining hall at that point, correct to two decimal places. I also bought a coupon for reusable cartons, because why should my lack of dinnertime comrades put the environment at risk?

Sometimes, though, I’m brave. I resolutely grab a plate and sit down at a table behind a pillar, trying to blend into the scenery. Every time I hear the doors open, I look up desperately: Friend, is that you? It isn’t. I am dejected. For the next 15 minutes, I stare intensely at an acquaintance’s Snapchat story — 128 pictures of a blurry television screen, all captioned “LOL.” A passerby with a tray glances at me, and I nod my head at my phone wisely, as if that Snapchat story had just revealed to me all the secrets of the universe. Then I look up and we make eye contact.

“What are you looking at?” I ask him telepathically. I’m sitting here, all alone, by choice. I’m not a loner — I’m a misanthrope like Dr. House. If you sit next to me, I’ll say something witty or smart-sounding like, “It’s lupus”.

He walks away quickly. I looked into his eyes for too long. I always do this.

I’m convinced that the stigma associated with dining alone is not a figment of my hyperactive imagination. The other day, I set my tray down before a friend just as she was finishing her dinner, and when I benevolently granted her permission to leave, she gasped, “But you’ll have to eat all alone!” This was an excellent observation, but clearly it was also shocking, and just a little bit blasphemous. I let her stay.

What’s interesting is that while eating alone in the dining hall is generally an awfully isolating experience, being alone in places like the library or the academic resource center is a collective phenomenon, a social experience wherein everyone’s alone, together. If you’re in a group in the library, you’re in the minority. In fact, when I’m in the library, I’m sometimes afraid to talk to myself.

The dynamics of loneliness on campus are complicated. When I am in the library, I despise humanity. Thoughts are racing through my head: Could he possibly sip on his Starbucks any louder? Oh God, she dropped that pen again. Yes, please sneeze some more, Mrs. Librarian, it’s very soothing. In the dining hall, I’ll sit with anyone who can climb into the chair. In many parts of the library, for reasons that are yet unclear, you have one chair with two computers, something I love simply for the ingenuity behind the concept. In the dining hall, you have one table with many chairs, and that's bad unless you have invisible friends.

Most importantly, when I’m tired of my room, I’ll go to the library, so I can be alone with everyone else. When I’m alone in the dining hall, I come back to my room, so I can be alone all by myself.

In all likelihood, this is something like survival of the fittest. When our planet was still young — approximately many months before NYU Abu Dhabi came to be — the ancestors who foraged for food in groups were more likely to survive, and it is those genes that now lead us to group up in the dining hall. Similarly, those among our ancestors who were nerdy and used big words were probably never invited to parties. And so, left to their own devices, they figured out a way to pass on their genes to us. This is the scientific fact of evolution.

But in the course of these many months, things have changed. The dinosaurs were wiped out and the old adage about strength in numbers is now only true if you’re an army of empty Al Ain water bottles occupying foreign territory. As Saadiyat has shown us, it’s okay to be an island. Take out those earphones. Look around. Make aggressive eye contact and have staring contests with people who don’t even know that you’re staring at them. Rise up against capitalism. Overthrow the bourgeoisie. Love cats.

And if you’re ever in the dining hall and find yourself surrounded by a sea of unfamiliar faces, just look behind the pillars: I’ll be there.