I'm so glad you have this page. Now I can truly know that someone else feels the same. I literally cry a lot of the time because I'm not allowed to dorm because I'm a girl. Reading your blog makes me feel less lonely- thanks for the tips.
Thanks for your message!
I know it can be very tough and isolating experience, but hang in there and know that it won't always be so hard. Most commuters feel exactly the same and you are not alone.My first year of commuting was absolutely dreadful. I felt completely cut off from everyone else and I lost a lot of 'friendships' that I thought I had built during my first year of college when I dormed. My friends from high school came home with all of these fabulous stories of their life in the dorms, which made it even harder. But dorming isn't without flaws either, and I can say, having done both, there is no 'perfect' experience. Dorms aren't always all they're cracked up to be.
I can't speak for you or your experiences, but for me, my misery that first year can be attributed to horrendous planning (in terms of scheduling) and an incredibly bad attitude. Commuting was not my first choice and I knew I was going to hate it, so that's exactly what ended up happening. I scheduled classes so I could be on campus only 1 or 2 days a week, which was why in the long run I lost a lot of friends; we weren't super close to begin with, and then we just never saw each other because my scheduling made it very inconvenient to do so. Looking back, it's very easy to see that. But at the time, I was convinced that my commuter status made me some sort of social pariah and it made me even more miserable and unable to see that there was anything that I could do to make it better.
Once I decided to shift my schedule to be more evenly spread throughout the week, I began opening myself up to more opportunities on campus and spent more time with actual people and it changed my experience so dramatically. Sometimes I had to work a little harder than resident students to make clubs and social activities work for me, but most of the time it worked out quite naturally with my schedule because I made an effort to plan it that way.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: commuting may not have been your first choice, but it IS a liveable choice. It's not easy, but you have to allow yourself to explore the possibility that maybe it's not as bad as it feels right now. Look at what you are lacking in your experience and try to figure out how you can fill those needs with the resources that are available to you.
Hang in there!
