OPINION

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By Liza Fergusson

I use the wire cutter to carefully remove my delicate bowl off of the pottery wheel bat just as the bell rings, ending my B period Ceramics II course. The bowl is the perfect depth to balance a spoon, and the lip has the slightest curvature, making it ideal for sipping the delectable milk that is left behind. A bowl made for cereal.

I stared at my perfect cereal bowl and grabbed a pencil to engrave a message on the bottom: “MILK FIRST.”

I didn’t comprehend the emotion my message would spark until days later, when Charlie Stone (‘25) approached me and informed me that his Ceramics I class had found my bowl and almost destroyed it. If they had not been halted by Upper School ceramics teacher Mary Arzt, the bowl would no longer exist, as Stone and his classmates considered my  message profane. 

Which comes first: the cereal or the milk? An age-old question very similar to that of the chicken or the egg, except many strongly believe that the answer is obvious: cereal comes first. But what happens when it doesn’t? Will the world end? Will we all perish? These seem to be some of the beliefs of many “Cereal First” members of the Collegiate community. So why are Cereal Firsters so aggressive about their opinion? And why did a vast amount of them personally attack me, a Milk First person, when asked to leave a comment on a poll sent out by The Match? 

In response to the poll regarding what the Collegiate community puts in the bowl first, William Britt (‘23) raised the concern that when pouring the milk first, the cereal pour will cause the milk to “slosh out of the bowl, creating a milky mess.” This theory provoked an experiment, in which I selected three different cereals based on weight and possible milk displacement and poured them into a milk-filled bowl to collect data. The results yielded that even Cap’n Crunch, the most dense of cereals, did not cause any milk sloshage. I also tested two different types of milk: a two-percent milk, as well as a much less dense almond milk. Therefore, the theory of milk sloshage has been debunked.

My brother Luke Fergusson, a nineteen-year-old student at James Madison University, provided the pro-cereal reasoning that if you pour the milk first, you will not know how much cereal to pour. This idea makes no sense, and the same could be said for the reverse: If you pour the cereal first, you will not know how much milk to use. There goes another “Cereal First” theory. 

Kate Turnbull (‘23) suggested the idea that pouring milk first will leave the bottom of the cereal soggy, and the top dry. Where Turnbull sees the half-soggy, half-crunchy bowl as a problem, and gross, I see variety and innovation, as I love different textures when I’m eating cereal. 

The most common comments received in the poll were personal attacks on people who put the milk first. Both James Galgano (‘25) and Eleanor Qureshi (‘26) said that, “People that put milk in before cereal are freaks of society,” while others claimed that Milk Firsters are not mentally sound. So who is right? Does the cereal come first? 

The answer is: No. I put the milk first. I enjoy putting the milk first. It gives me a variety of both crunchy and saturated cereal. It allows me to place the milk back into the fridge before pouring my cereal, which streamlines my cereal-eating process. 

What pouring my milk first does not do is make me incredibly hostile towards people that pour their cereal first. And if putting the milk first has taught me anything, it would be that people who put the cereal first truly do despise those who put the milk first. Which is just another reason why you should be pouring the milk first. If putting the cereal first forces you to be overwhelmingly negative towards Milk Firsters, who needs that kind of negativity in their life? 

In the end, only 8.5% of students and faculty who voted in the poll voted for milk first. 

Other notable comments from The Match poll: 

• “I’m bamboozled as to why anyone would put milk first… disgusting”- Georgia Mcmanus (‘23)
• “Anyone who says otherwise needs to be checked for insanity.”- Robby Aboud (‘23)
• “If you put milk first, you deserve the ants that appear in your kitchen.”- Jackson Vance (‘26)

All photos by Liza Fergusson.