Mo om, I'm home

By Julia Betancourt U nlike most Barnard students, I am fortunate enough to be able to say these words every day, as I let the apartment door slam shut behind me and walk into the living room to greet my parents. Commuting to school is a vastly different experience from that of other Barnard students, for whom packing a lunch, hugging parents “hello” after school, and carefully planning every day to make it home at a decent hour all seem like archaic customs. For Barnard’s commuting population, however, this is an everyday experience. Most students don’t realize that it is even possible to live at home for these four years. I can understand why—when applying to college, my high school insisted that “everyone dorms” and I was pushed to apply to two out of state schools despite knowing even back then that I would commute. For me, it made more sense to live at home, where I could enjoy my parent’s cooking every night, than to spend $10,000 a year or more on a dorm. If I didn’t dorm when I went to high school four miles from home, then why should I dorm at a school a quarter of the distance away? I knew the adjustment to college would be difficult and that changing my living space would only make that more stressful.

This is not to say that commuting is never stressful—there are days when I wish I could roll out of bed at 8:30, still in my pajamas, and still make it to an 8:40 on time, or that I could “Mo-om, I’m home!” snuggle up in my bed and nap for the strange, two hour break between my piano class and my seminar. But my bed is too far away from campus to make this happen. I would also like not having to come up on a day in the middle of reading week to drop a hard copy of my final paper under a professor’s door, especially when email will suffice. This simple request that takes ten minutes for a residential student can take two hours out of a commuter’s day. This semester, I am taking a science lab that requires me to stay on campus after dark, something I usually try to avoid. Assuming the class ends on time, I could catch a bus that leaves me across the street from my building twenty-five minutes later. However, on most days, more than half the class stays past the official end time to finish the work. If I stay after class and miss my bus, I have to wait at least thirty minutes for the next one or put myself in danger by walking through streets that are abandoned when the sun goes down. The difference between a class ending on time and two minutes late makes all the difference in a commuter’s day.

However, commuting has its benefits, such as built-in exercise as I walk to campus every morning and a mandatory break from school when I leave the immediate neighborhood to go to sleep every night. I am able to run to my mother for advice and support when college is stressful, instead of having to calculate time differences and hope that she didn’t go to bed early again. I don’t have to worry that, in addition to not studying for a quiz at 2:40, I forgot to pack my lucky sweater after bringing it home for the summer. The little things make all the difference, so that when the big challenges come up, like midterms and research papers, I feel more equipped to handle them.

Strangely, the people who seem to “get it” the most, besides other commuters, are professors. And I can’t help but wonder why, until they start discussing their own commuting experiences, either from their undergraduate days or now that they travel into New York from other towns. I believe that this lack of student understanding stems from campus culture, one which practically requires living on-campus to fully participate in late-night clubs and events. For commuter students, it just isn’t practical to stay on-campus for club meetings that start at 8pm. In my case, with classes that start at 8:40, I would be out in the world for more than twelve hours without a place to take off my shoes and rest awhile.

Skip-Stop, Barnard’s commuter organization, does help with this predicament. Housed out of the commuter lounge in 103 Diana, Skip-Stop serves to help commuters engage with the greater Barnard community. In my first semester, this group helped me to feel as though I belonged on a campus that ignored my need to get home at a decent hour. Through events such as Midday Breakfast and Little Sub, commuter-friendly alternatives to two of Barnard’s most beloved evening and nighttime traditions, Skip-Stop provides a place for commuters to exist without having to board an empty train late at night. Since sophomore year, I have been a member of the e-board, working with other commuters to advocate for commuter students and provide opportunities for them to enjoy events that don’t require leaving campus at unsafe times. I admit, commuter life is not the easiest, nor is it for everyone. But there is something about the community that binds us together. Those of us who are left on the margins of Barnard’s club and social scenes have come together to support each other in ways that I can’t explain. We are able to discuss travel hacks and tips on how to schedule classes so that we don’t have to spend too much time on campus with nothing to do. There is an unspoken understanding, one shared between each and every commuter, that this is the right choice for us. No matter what odd looks we get as we open the blue lockers in the basement of Barnard Hall, we will continue to walk, ride the bus, take the train, ride a bike, or carpool proud of our choice and in solidarity with one another.