Commuter-athlete life is a juggling act

You hear the obnoxious sound of your alarm going off at the gruesome time of 7:30 a.m. You hit snooze about three times before you jump up and realize it’s 7:50 a.m. and you have ten minutes to get ready for your 8:00 a.m. class. You hop out of bed, get ready as quickly as possible, and have five minutes to spare to make your way to class. Annoying, but simple, right?

Now imagine that same scenario as a commuter. Not so easy and breezy. As a commuter, there’s no room to be late, no room for error. Especially with an 8 a.m., because freeways are going to be packed. Then you’ve got to concern yourself with the terrible parking situation, and then sprint to class. If you’ve got long breaks in between classes, don’t even think about going back home just to waste gas.

Now factor in being an athlete also. Being a commuting athlete is even more difficult. If your practice doesn’t start until the late afternoon, then you’re not going to be done until around evening time. By the time you finish up at the trainer’s at approximately 6:30 p.m., there’s not much time to hangout and hang with your friends in the café since it closes at 7 p.m. Then you’ve got to deal with traffic again on the way back home.

Trying to become more involved in the different activities on campus is also hard as a commuter, because you rarely hear about them until after they’ve already passed. I think that as a commuter, our school still has some work to do when it comes to developing a better relationship with the commuters on campus.

It would be great to see more dialogue happening between commuters and SGA, that way, whenever we have long breaks in between classes, we could possibly have “commuter only” events or activities. When it comes to getting in a proper dinner, having the café stay open a little later, that way athletes can get their dinner in without rushing would be super helpful.

A few other ideas that could possibly be implemented are considering having afternoon chapels at least one day a week. Some of us just can’t always make it to the earlier chapels or the late-night chapels. Lastly, although we are a small university, parking on campus can be such an inconvenience at times. With talks of the new plan to knock out a few parking spaces in order to expand the café into a student center next school year, it’ll be interesting to see how our school goes about that. Hopefully, they will take commuters into careful consideration when executing our campus beautification plan.

There’s still so much room for improvement when it comes to strengthening the relationship between commuters and the rest of the school. Hopefully, commuters can see that void being fulfilled sometime soon because we are just as much part of this wonderful school as much as anyone else!