Fellow vego here, who also has to cook for themselves (but thankfully not every night): what is your go-to meal when you feel like you have no time? What is your favourite vegetarian recipe?
Hmm.. when I have no time I sometimes will make 2 minute noodles but add frozen veggies & if I have any on hand some tofu to make it more nutritious.
This might be cheating but my favourite recipe is probably
this chocolate cake. I don't make the glaze and instead do my own icing. If you want more savoury options I've replied to K8 earlier with some of those
Would you ever go vegan? Why/why not?
I've been vegan for 3 years now so definitely would
Veganism for me was more motivated by animal cruelty whereas being vegetarian was more motivated by the environment. I watched earthlings (dominion is a more recent and Aus version of this but it wasn't out at that time) and ooft that was hard to watch while still consuming eggs & dairy. I have friends who are farmers so I'm definitely not under the impression that all farmers would choose to mistreat their animals but yeah...
Vegetarian for me was more instant whereas being vegan was a process. I started off by picking a vegan option when one was available (otherwise I'd still happily get the vegetarian one), making easy substitutes and gradually incorporating more new vego foods (nutritional yeast flakes <3 ) until winding up as I am now.
Also, I'd love your best time management tips. And, do you think that taking on lots in Year 12 was a good thing? Looking back, if you could have chosen to take some of the burden off of yourself, would you have?
My best time management tip is that burn out costs a lot more time than taking care of yourself properly does. Schedule in days off & if some event falls on that day either move the day off
forwards or stick to it unless there's an
extremely good reason for ignoring that day off. I found that keeping track of assignments and classwork in an app specifically for that and keeping track of my other commitments in my bullet journal was the way to go but you have time to experiment with this so test out a few different ways
One things I found useful was to take any nothing time (e.g. waiting for someone, on a train) and find a way to make it productive. This meant flashcards on my phone, revision apps, or trying some mindfulness. Sometimes cycling between those was the way to go. (It's also ok if sometimes you want to just
be without trying to do anything but it's good to have the option there.
I also tracked my internet usage - spending half an hour discontentedly scrolling through social media isn't a great use of time and it's nice to have reminders to snap you out of that.
I absolutely think that taking on lots of extra curriculars was the right thing for me. It gave me something I could do without feeling remotely guilty that wasn't schoolwork and I needed the break. It gave me social groups that weren't just my classmates and it meant that even if I screwed up my academics I could still go 'hey, there's a think of value I did' when I wanted to have a go at myself for everything and be super-defeatist. If it feels like a burden consider its place in your life, otherwise, don't listen to anyone who says you should give up everything in year 12 to focus purely on your studies