Khadijah Islam
Even though most university students prefer the idea of moving out of their family home when commencing their undergraduate course, research shows that 25% of students in the UK commute to university, and I happen to be in that group myself.
Getting my own place, my own freedom, and some independence sure sounded good to me when I was making plans for university – but saving a ton of money and avoiding sticky housemate drama sounded a whole lot better. I couldn’t imagine learning to cook, doing my laundry, and making decisions for myself. Me? Being an adult? HAHA. Good one.
I soon learned that commuting has a ton of benefits. Mainly, you save money and (providing you still live with hands-on parents) get to spend the time you would doing laundry and cooking on university work, making more time for yourself. Sounds perfect for a lazy one like me.
So, I chose to take a train from Nottingham to Leicester three days a week, which is only a 20-minute journey for just £8. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. I even began romanticising my journey and had high expectations after talking to other commuters who made it sound mesmerising, like a dream. Oh, how wrong was I…
Expectation:
It’s 6am. You wake up in satin pyjamas and your hair is effortlessly wavy while your radiant skin is naturally bright and glowing. You look out of the window and the rising sun casts a rosy hue in the morning sky, shining over the streets and into your eyes as you look out. You can see crispy autumn leaves falling elegantly from trees and squirrels running around, munching on nuts as you smile at them like you’re Snow White and can sing to animals. You hum as you brush your teeth since you’ve got all the time in the world to get ready. You open your wardrobe and put on a woolly jumper and a cosy coat. You look cute as hell and your makeup looks perfect.
Your bus arrives on time to drop you off at the train station and you get down with a smile on your face. You grab a nice hot chocolate and smile at the train conductor who opens the door for you as your train sets off. You take a seat and look at the beautiful view filled with greenery and nature. You get down from the train and take a nice long walk to your university with a nice cool breeze in your hair and walk up the steps of the building, into your lecture room where everyone’s waiting for you with a smile. It all seems perfect.
Reality:
It’s 7am. You just pressed snooze for the 30th time until you suddenly remember that your bus comes in 10 minutes which means you have 8 minutes to get ready and 2 minutes to walk to the bus stop. You look in the mirror. You look dreadful. Your hair looks like Hagrid from Harry Potter, and you have as many pimples as you have alarms set. How could you press snooze that many times? You were supposed to wake up and be out of the house almost an hour ago.
You open your window to look out and of course, you predicted it – there’s thunder and it’s raining cats and dogs outside, which means you must travel all the way to another city drenched in both rain and your tears because you’ve had enough of this, and you just want to go back to bed. Outside you can just see pigeons doing their business outside your window and school kids blasting music because apparently walking to school quietly is too hard for the younger generation. You’ve got 5 minutes to brush your teeth and put on the same joggers, hoodie, and green parka that you wear every day with no time for makeup.
You run to the bus stop down the road. Surprise surprise, you missed it because you tripped over your shoelaces on the porch and a bunch of school kids wouldn’t move out of your way. So, you’re stuck waiting for the next one in the rain. You finally arrive at the train station, looking mardy as hell because what a shit morning it’s been – and just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, you’ve got to beg the train conductor to let you on the train 30 seconds before it sets off. As you get on, there’s no space to sit down so you’re stuck squished under the armpit of a huge middle-aged man. Oh, it gets worse when you remember that you had homework left to do, even though you told yourself you’d have more time to do it, so you spend the next 20 minutes moping to the middle-aged man about your horrible experience of commuting to uni while doing your homework on the window.
You finally get off the train, but you can’t walk in this freezing rain, so you have to pay for an Uber to get to the seminar that you’re already late for. The Uber driver won’t shut up so you have to spend 10 minutes just laughing at jokes you don’t even get until you’re right in front of your uni. You walk up, I don’t know, about a billion stairs to get to the third floor. You’re the last person to walk into the lecture hall and everyone stares at you, giving you the most judgey looks ever, while you find a seat, completely out of breath. That’s the last time you press the snooze button. Until the next time.
Moral of the story: only commute if you are sure you are disciplined and organised enough to make those early wake-up calls.
Happy commuting!
Featured image courtesy of S. Hermann and F. Richter on Pixabay. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
