I made this “starter pack” because I find it to apply to my first 3 months at Baruch. I’ve never been accustomed to making a really long commute especially one almost every single day. It takes me about an hour and a half to get to school (on a good day). So, Baruch has really changed my life a lot because I literally spend about 12 hours of my week just commuting. This is a big deal because I have 168 hours in my week. I could have used these hours to sleep comfortably in my bed instead of trying to sneak in naps while standing up on the train or sneak in naps while being squished by the obese person next to me on the express bus. Although commuting isn’t exactly the biggest part of going to Baruch, it really does have an affect on me and the things I do. For example, this has made my eating habits become much worse especially for the simple fact that I can’t go back home to eat during my breaks and everything is so expensive in the city except for the $1 slices of pizza. So, for me, the Freshman 15 is real. Another huge concept about commuting is that the MTA is not your friend. They will make you late to a class that you want to be on time and make you an hour late to a class that you have a test in. Basically, train delays are my worst nightmare and traffic from staten island to the city is a daily occurrence but it still manages to piss me off every. single. day. Sometimes I just want to give the bus driver a 50 dollar bill, wink at him, and tell him he better step on it because I didn’t feel like getting out of bed that morning. Oh yeah, also this includes my earphones because that’s the only way I can ignore all of the rude people on the train and avoid talking to people in the morning. So basically these 3 months at Baruch I have just learned how much I hate commuting. Other than that, I’ve learned that you can’t just walk into the class late and only have to fear other students staring at you, because you better fear your teacher failing you as well. So, this is not high school where the least of my worries about commuting was convincing my little brother to warm up my car in the morning so that I can be warm and whether or not I was going to fail gym class because I never showed up. The real struggles are waking up 3 hours before my class and working on the weekends and still managing time to barely do my homework. Yay.
