The Student Apartment That Taught Me to Drink Soda

There is a version of student life that appears in photographs.

A tidy breakfast.

Fresh tomatoes.

Roasted peppers.

Tea.

A sesame simit.

Maybe another one with cheese.

Everything arranged on a table as though somebody woke up early, went shopping, came home, and made responsible decisions.

In June 2010, I wrote an entry called “student apartment breakfast” and described exactly that kind of meal.

Then I immediately admitted that I was lying.

Of course it was not real.

This was a student apartment.

What were cherry tomatoes and roasted peppers doing there?

That correction was much closer to the truth.

The real story was about soda.

More specifically, about how I learned to like something I had disliked since childhood because one day there was almost nothing else left to drink.

That is a far more convincing student-house memory.

As a child, I had tried mineral water a few times.

I hated it.

The first sip was enough.

I would reject it immediately.

Whatever people liked about that sharp, mineral taste made no sense to me.

Then years passed.

I moved into the kind of life where refrigerators were not always maintained according to nutritional planning.

Friends would come over to drink.

They brought vodka.

And because they knew I did not like soda, they would also bring soda.

The logic was apparently that I would not already have any at home.

They were correct.

So the bottles accumulated through other people’s habits rather than mine.

Then came the day.

I looked around the house.

No water.

No cola.

No milk.

Nothing.

The old entry exaggerates this in the way student stories should.

Not a gram of water.

Not a gram of cola.

Not a gram of milk.

Milk, I joked, had been absent from my life for so long that I had almost forgotten what it looked like.

Powdered milk, maybe.

Actual milk?

Ancient history.

Then I opened the refrigerator.

Two bottles of soda.

Beypazarı.

I closed the door immediately.

No.

Absolutely not.

Apparently thirst and principle were now negotiating.

A while later I opened the refrigerator again.

The bottles were still there.

Of course they were.

Soda is patient.

It does not care whether you approve of it.

Eventually I opened one.

Took a drink.

And after a little while, the reaction changed completely.

I remember the thought in the old entry very clearly:

Are you stupid?

Why don’t you drink this?

From that day onward, I started buying it in six-packs.

That was the conversion.

No sophisticated tasting process.

No recommendation.

No wellness article explaining minerals.

No doctor.

No advertising.

Just an almost empty student refrigerator.

Necessity introduced the product.

Habit did the rest.

This is how many adult preferences begin.

Not through taste.

Through circumstance.

We like to imagine that we discover what we enjoy by choosing freely among options.

Sometimes we do.

But a surprising amount of taste is accidental.

You start drinking a certain coffee because it is what the office has.

You listen to a band because a friend copied the album onto your computer.

You learn a dish because it is cheap near the place where you work.

You start using a software tool because the company already uses it.

You take one route because another road is under construction.

Then repetition does something strange.

The temporary solution becomes preference.

Eventually you defend it.

I did not become a soda drinker because someone convinced me.

I became one because the refrigerator cornered me.

This is one reason student life is such an efficient teacher.

It removes options.

Not always dramatically.

Often economically.

Sometimes lazily.

Sometimes because nobody planned.

But constraints force experiments.

What can we cook with this?

What can we drink?

Can this be eaten tomorrow?

How many meals can come out of one pan?

Do we really need that?

Can four people use the same thing?

You learn substitution before anyone teaches the word.

Adult households often try to prevent these situations.

You notice something is running out.

You buy it.

There is always water.

Basic food.

Cleaning supplies.

Backup.

The house becomes reliable.

Student houses are often less predictable.

The refrigerator can contain mustard, half a lemon, something nobody remembers buying, two sodas, and absolutely no actual meal.

This is not a universal student experience, obviously.

Some students are disciplined.

Some houses are cleaner than family homes.

Some people cook beautifully.

But the stereotype exists because enough of us recognized the opposite.

Student housing can create a strange economy in which ownership and consumption are loosely related.

Who bought this?

No idea.

Can I use it?

Probably.

Is this still good?

Define good.

Food becomes communal archaeology.

The soda had entered my refrigerator because my friends brought it.

That detail matters.

The apartment was not only a place of shortage.

It was a social place.

People came over.

They brought drinks.

Things stayed.

Habits transferred.

Student life is full of cultural contamination in the best sense.

You arrive with preferences formed by family.

Then roommates and friends attack them.

You begin eating things your family never cooked.

Listening to music nobody at home listened to.

Sleeping at hours that would have looked insane before.

Using words you did not use before.

Drinking soda.

Independence is partly exposure to other people’s routines without parental filtering.

That can be wonderful.

It can also produce some truly terrible habits.

The original entry ends by saying that student houses can make you addicted to certain things.

But not tomatoes and peppers.

Especially not roasted peppers and cherry tomatoes.

That joke works because it contrasts the fantasy of student life with the material reality I remembered.

The fantasy breakfast is balanced.

Colorful.

Intentional.

The real student-house lesson is:

There was nothing to drink, so I drank the thing I hated.

Then I liked it.

That is a better story because it contains adaptation.

Student life changes you partly through discomfort.

You do not have everything arranged.

You solve small problems.

Most are not serious enough to become dramatic memories.

But they accumulate into competence.

Or at least resilience.

You learn that being hungry for a while is not a catastrophe.

That a meal does not have to resemble a family table.

That brands matter less when money is tight.

That leftovers are a legitimate food category.

That guests may contribute more to your refrigerator than you do.

That you can dislike something for years and then suddenly discover you were wrong.

The last lesson is bigger than soda.

We often carry childhood judgments into adulthood without testing them again.

I hate this.

I don’t eat that.

I never drink this.

I’m not that kind of person.

Maybe.

But when was the last test?

Tastes change.

Bodies change.

Context changes.

Memory can preserve dislike long after the dislike itself would have disappeared.

I had already decided what soda was.

Bad.

Then one day the decision met new circumstances.

The result changed.

This is common with food because childhood taste is intense and categorical.

Children do not say:

I currently find the bitterness slightly unpleasant.

They say:

Disgusting.

Never.

Then adulthood quietly reopens the case.

Coffee.

Olives.

Mineral water.

Spicy food.

Vegetables.

Whatever the item is, the adult sometimes discovers that the old verdict is obsolete.

The funny part is how quickly the new preference can become just as categorical.

I hate soda.

One bottle later:

Why have I not been drinking this?

Then six-packs.

Humans are excellent at being certain before and after changing their minds.

We rarely spend enough time in the middle saying:

Apparently I was wrong.

The old entry contains that moment.

“Are you stupid?”

That was directed at my earlier self.

A small domestic revelation.

No witnesses required.

There is also something very specific about Beypazarı in the memory.

I did not write merely “mineral water.”

I named the brand.

That kind of detail matters in nostalgia because branded ordinary objects become timestamps.

Certain bottles.

Certain packaging.

Certain snacks.

Certain phones.

Certain cars.

Certain computer parts.

We remember periods through commercial objects even when we do not intend to.

A brand can become part of a personal landscape.

Not because we were loyal consumers.

Because it happened to be there.

This is why old supermarket shelves in photographs can produce stronger nostalgia than monuments.

The products were part of the background.

You touched them every day.

Then packaging changes.

Prices change.

Some disappear.

You age.

Suddenly the bottle means a year.

In this case:

student apartment, friends, vodka, empty refrigerator, two Beypazarı sodas.

That combination reconstructs the atmosphere far better than saying:

I was a student and money was sometimes limited.

Specific objects make memory believable.

I should be careful here.

The old entry does not explicitly say I was poor.

Student-house emptiness can come from poverty, laziness, bad planning, or all three.

I should not invent financial hardship the source does not establish.

What it establishes is scarcity inside the house at that moment.

There was basically nothing to drink.

That is enough.

The comedy does not require tragedy.

In fact, the tone of the original is affectionate.

The student apartment is being mocked from inside.

That distinction matters.

There is a kind of humor that only works when the writer belongs to the condition.

“Of course there were no tomatoes.”

The joke is not aimed at some distant irresponsible student.

It is aimed at us.

At the life.

At the accepted disorder.

This kind of self-mockery is one of the most useful forms of nostalgia because it avoids polishing the past.

Student years are often romanticized later.

Freedom.

Friends.

Youth.

Long conversations.

Cheap nights out.

No serious responsibilities.

Fine.

But there were also empty refrigerators.

Bad sleep.

Mess.

Unwashed dishes.

Things breaking.

Money disappearing.

Terrible food decisions.

The nostalgia becomes richer when these remain.

A polished memory is weaker than a messy one.

The mess gives it texture.

The same applies to independence.

We often remember leaving home as freedom.

But freedom means nobody stocked the refrigerator unless you did.

That is the price.

At home, basic infrastructure appears magically because someone is maintaining it.

Food exists.

Soap exists.

Towels reappear clean.

The refrigerator contains things you did not buy.

Student housing reveals the labor behind ordinary domestic life by letting that labor fail.

No water?

Ah.

Apparently water has to be purchased.

No food?

Interesting.

Apparently meals do not generate themselves.

This can be one of the first practical educations in adulthood.

You begin to understand parents differently.

Not necessarily immediately.

At first you may simply become very good at surviving without milk.

But later, when you maintain a household yourself, the invisible work becomes obvious.

Somebody always notices.

Somebody shops.

Somebody replaces.

Somebody cleans.

Somebody thinks ahead.

Independence is not the absence of these tasks.

It is inheriting them.

Student life sometimes teaches this badly but effectively.

The refrigerator is the report card.

If it is empty, somebody failed planning.

If four people share the house, responsibility can become wonderfully diffuse.

Who was supposed to buy water?

Nobody.

Therefore nobody did.

Collective responsibility is one of the oldest paths to no responsibility.

Again, the old entry does not specify roommates, so I will not invent them.

But friends were clearly part of the apartment’s life.

They came to drink.

They brought vodka and soda.

That is enough social context.

I can imagine the wider pattern without claiming details:

objects arriving through visits, preferences circulating, the house changing through whoever passed through it.

Student homes are often porous this way.

Family homes tend to have stronger boundaries.

This is ours.

These are our routines.

Student homes can become temporary ecosystems.

People appear.

Stay late.

Leave something.

Borrow something.

Return days later.

A bottle survives its owner.

A song becomes associated with the room.

A chair becomes everyone’s chair.

The house is temporary, but socially dense.

That is why memories from these places can feel larger than the square meters deserve.

A small apartment can contain an entire period.

One refrigerator shelf can preserve a story fifteen years later.

The soda story is also about learning through low stakes.

Nothing serious happened.

That is valuable.

Not every memory needs heartbreak, military service, work stress, or a dramatic turning point.

A life is also built from taste changes.

One day you drink something.

Like it.

Start buying it.

That becomes part of who you are.

The transition is too small to notice while living.

The archive catches it.

This is why old casual writing is so useful.

Formal autobiography remembers milestones.

Casual entries remember origin stories.

Why do I drink this?

When did I start doing that?

Who introduced me to this show?

Why do I use this phrase?

Where did this habit come from?

Without records, most answers disappear.

We simply become the person who does the thing.

Then the beginning is lost.

The 2010 entry tells me:

You started buying soda in six-packs because one day your student apartment contained almost nothing else to drink.

That is wonderfully specific.

And wonderfully unimportant.

Which makes it important in exactly the right way.

Personal history needs low-stakes details or it becomes a list of crises.

Nobody lives only through major events.

Most identity is assembled quietly.

What you drink.

What you eat.

What music you put on.

How you make tea.

Which route you choose.

Where you sit.

Which brands become automatic.

These choices accumulate until they look like personality.

Many began as accidents.

That is humbling.

We like to imagine ourselves as authors.

Often we are also leftovers of circumstance.

A friend brings something.

You try it.

Years later you still buy it.

This does not make identity fake.

It makes identity historical.

We are composed partly of encounters.

People leave traces.

Places leave habits.

Shortages leave preferences.

A student refrigerator can make a permanent contribution.

There is a broader idea here about constraint and creativity.

Abundance lets you choose what you already know.

Constraint forces you to look again at what you rejected.

If the refrigerator had contained cold water, I would have drunk water.

If there had been cola, probably cola.

The soda would have remained untouched.

Choice would have protected the old preference.

Scarcity interrupted it.

This happens beyond food.

If your usual software is unavailable, you learn another.

If your normal route closes, you discover a different neighborhood.

If the person who always handles something leaves, you learn the task.

If your familiar social circle disappears, you meet new people.

Constraint is unpleasant partly because it removes habit.

But habit removal creates information.

You learn what else works.

Sometimes the old solution remains better.

Sometimes you discover something new.

The important part is that the comparison finally happens.

That day, soda won.

I would not go so far as to recommend empty refrigerators as a personal-development technique.

There are easier ways to expand taste.

But the mechanism worked.

There is another piece of comedy in the entry: my friends knew I disliked soda, so they brought it with them.

This meant the house contained a product specifically because I did not consume it.

Then I eventually consumed it because nothing else remained.

The rejected thing survived long enough to become the solution.

That has almost the structure of a fable.

The thing nobody wants waits patiently until conditions change.

Then:

Who is useless now?

Again, I should not make mineral water carry too much philosophy.

But the shape is satisfying.

Some objects have perfect narrative timing.

They enter early.

Appear irrelevant.

Return later.

The two bottles were already waiting in the refrigerator before the story knew it needed them.

There is also a subtle difference between soda and water in Turkish daily life that the old entry assumes.

Mineral water is not simply water.

It has taste.

Texture.

Identity.

You do not necessarily reach for it when thirsty in the same way.

That is why finding only soda still felt like finding “nothing” at first.

The refrigerator technically contained drinkable liquid.

Emotionally, it contained no acceptable drink.

This distinction appears everywhere.

“There is nothing to eat” usually does not mean the house contains zero calories.

It means:

There is nothing I currently want to recognize as food.

Student life exposes this sentence repeatedly.

Open cupboard.

Pasta.

Rice.

Something canned.

Nothing to eat.

The problem is not inventory.

It is desire.

Then hunger renegotiates desire.

Thirst did the same for soda.

Human preference is much more context-dependent than we admit.

The same thing can taste different depending on hunger, company, temperature, memory, place, mood.

A cheap meal after a long day can be unforgettable.

An expensive meal without appetite can be wasted.

The soda probably did not physically change between childhood and that student apartment.

I did.

The situation did.

Taste is partly chemistry and partly biography.

That is why certain foods become attached to eras.

They do not only taste like themselves.

They taste like where we were.

I do not know whether Beypazarı soda still evokes the student apartment for me every time.

The source does not say.

But the archive connects them now permanently.

Anyone reading the entry sees the bottle and the house together.

That is what writing does.

It joins objects to time.

Perhaps this is why I enjoy recovering these entries.

At the time, they were jokes written quickly.

Now they are evidence.

Not evidence of important historical events.

Evidence of texture.

How we lived.

What we complained about.

What was in the refrigerator.

What was not.

What friends brought when they visited.

Which habits began accidentally.

This is the level at which a period becomes human.

A decade is not only politics and technology.

It is also somebody opening a refrigerator and finding two bottles they do not want.

The early 2000s and 2010s in my memories contain computers, cars, university, work, military service, music archives, bars, long cables, and student apartments.

Those large categories become real only through detail.

The first computer had parts.

The military had a whistle.

The headphones had a ten-meter cable.

The student apartment had two Beypazarı sodas.

That is how memory resists becoming generic.

There is also something reassuring in the smallness of the transformation.

Not every change requires discipline.

Sometimes life changes you while you are thirsty.

You try the thing.

You reconsider.

Done.

We often make self-improvement sound exhausting.

Plans.

Goals.

Habits.

Tracking.

Commitment.

But human beings also change casually.

A friend says something.

A city surprises us.

A product remains in the fridge.

A song comes on at the right time.

A person shows us another way.

The change enters sideways.

Years later, it looks natural.

You become somebody who buys soda in six-packs.

You forget that there was a day before that.

Unless you wrote it down.

I did.

And the final line of the old entry still works.

Student houses can make you addicted to certain things.

But not tomatoes.

Not peppers.

Certainly not roasted peppers and cherry tomatoes.

The fantasy breakfast belonged to another world.

The real breakfast, or perhaps the real education, was less photogenic.

Open the refrigerator.

Nothing useful.

Close it.

Open it again.

Fine.

Take the soda.

Drink.

Pause.

Then discover that the thing you had hated for years was actually good.

That is student life too.

A place where sometimes the refrigerator teaches the lesson.