Crashing

The nice thing about the formal hall "High Table" dinners is that they are a relaxed many-hour affair, with several courses, a great deal of wine, all in the company of scholars.

The bad thing about the formal hall "High Table" dinners is that they are a relaxed many-hour affair, with several courses, a great deal of wine, all in the company of scholars.

The truth is that they would be a lot more fun

(a) if I were not so busy these days that several hours seems insanely long for a meal, and...

(b) if I got to choose which scholars I sit next to at dinner (the seating chart is sometimes a very pleasant surprise, and sometimes a cause for groans).

So I thought to myself "there must be an efficient new-yorker way to handle formal high table dinner". And indeed there is.

After the meal is finished in the great hall, the Principal bangs her gavel, all the students stand, and the high table files out to the senior common room, where the after dinner drinks (including nice port), chocolates, coffee, tea, fruit, and whatnot are served. (We do not have snuff like the folks at All Souls though). People linger in the senior common room making conversation , and working on the digestifs -- crucially, there is no seating plan for dessert, so you can talk to whomever you please.

My new york way to handle high table?: Skip the dinner and crash dessert.

I'm not sure that this is actually against the rules, but it is certainly something that no one else seems to do. But why should it be against the rules? I mean, the college has no objection to feeding me dinner with dessert. Why should they object if I decline on the dinner and go straight for the chocolates and port? Despite my insistence that it is all on the up-and-up, I admit that I do not make it all that public that I've become a crasher --- in fact, I tend to hide in the corner of the senior common room far from the principal -- as she is really the only one of sufficient gravitas that I would feel ashamed of myself trying to argue to her that "Well, it may be that it is "just not done" here, but since i dont' see why it is "just not done", I'm just gonna do it anyway".