commuting

For each student the “college experience” is different, some live on campus, in an apartment or the dorms while others commute from home. Some students are fresh out of high school while others are coming back because life took them an alternative route after high school. Whatever the story might be, no way of college is the “right” or “wrong” way of doing it. I, personally, am a commuter student. I live at home, rent free, with my parents. I work at a restaurant and go to school full time. I wonder sometimes about how my college experience might be different if I had chosen to go to a big university and live on campus. But with Wright State in the Dayton area, it gives Dayton somewhat of a college scene, maybe not your “typical” college scene but it is a college scene.

There are students working in department stores and restaurants making money to pay for their books, tuition, or rent. But what makes the college scene different for the Dayton area is that we, the students, come from all different places. We all aren’t from the Beavercreek, Fairborn area. For sophomore Jessica Olson, it’s a twenty minute drive from Centerville, but commuting works out for her. “I guess I like that I can still go to school, but not be emerged in all the drama school can offer,” said Olson.

Working as a nursing assistant for Fidelity Healthcare four or five days a week, Olson says that her college experience would be “a lot different, a lot worse is my guess. I’m sure my relationship with God would suffer”. She feels this ways because she said she would probably have slipped into the partying if she weren’t maintaining such a busy schedule.

So Dayton, you do have a college scene. It’s just different than that of say, Oxford’s. You have students who go to school, work, take care of families, and still some how make time for leisure. Talk about time management skills! Having a smaller university around gives the students the opportunity to have the choice of such a school. It gives students who have chosen to come back to school after years down a different path the opportunity to do so. It also gives students who might just need that extra push to continue through college, the opportunity to go somewhere where they don’t feel so overwhelmed.