College is hard enough, but being a college commuter adds a whole new level of stress to the “best four years of your life.” While living off campus is full of perks such as avoiding NSO move-in days, getting a break from campus craziness, having access to your own bathroom and saving bucket loads of dough, being a college commuter has its fair share of downs. Here are ten struggle of being a Point Loma Nazarene University commuter.
Lomaland Drive stop lights
Aside from the randomly long lines of unexplained traffic, the Lomaland Drive stop lights take forever to change. Forever being two minutes of all the lights being red before deciding it’s safe to turn green. Also, did anyone else know you’re not allowed to turn right on a Lomaland Drive red? I definitely did not.
Cars that follow the speed limit
Not that we aren’t all law-abiding citizens, but when there’s an open road, you’re ten minutes late for class, and the car in front of you is going 34 in a 35, things get a little tense.
Finding a parking spot after 8 a.m.
Unless to plan to get to campus at the crack of dawn, you can forget finding an easy parking spot. More than likely you’ll have to wedge yourself between to poorly parked pick-ups and pray they somehow manage to back-up without leaving a massive scratch on the side of your car.
Chapel crowds that have “the right of way”
If you have a class right after chapel, you know the struggle of “chapel crowds.” You know, the swarms of people that won’t let you through so you sit at the stop sign by Public Safety for what seems like days while parking space numbers decline. I’ve never before thought more seriously about running people over in all my life.
The people who “create” their own parking spot
If by some miracle you get the last parking space down by the gravel beach lot, you can be sure that other commuters who are running late will not drive around to see if another space opens up. They will, instead, create their own parking spot…three inches behind your car. How on earth are we supposed to leave!? By pushing the other car out of you way, that’s how.
Checking Maps every ten minutes for traffic
While we sit at home enjoying as much morning relaxation time as we can, maybe even managing to eat some breakfast, we sit on our couch making sure that the traffic hasn’t changed in the last ten minutes. Refresh Maps…refresh Maps…refresh maps…refresh maps. See a yellow dot appear on the rout? It’s time to go.
Constantly rerouting to avoid the traffic
Suddenly, by some work of evil, five miles worth of red dashes appear on the maps rout and we commuters will take any other back road, coastal highway, or off road adventure to avoid the painful stop and go traffic. But we always keep refreshing to make sure that nothing has changed. Afterall, there has to be some way to shave off those two minutes from our arrival time so we can make it on time to class.
Hitting a 3G or 1x zone while listening to Pandora
The moment when that fresh beat dro…nope, wait, hit a dead zone. Right at the chorus, instead of jamming out, you are about to jam your head into the steering wheel waiting for the loading circle to stop spinning on your favorite album. Your commute just got a lot longer.
Realising you forgot a textbook or homework assignment halfway to school.
If you commute only 10 or 15 minutes, you probably don’t understand the complete horror of those who commute 30, 40 or even from an hour away and get a cold sweat when we realize we have forgotten something for class. We can’t turn around. It’s not an option. If we forget something, it’s forgotten. We just eat our pop-tarts to go and hope for a parking space when we arrive.
Lomaland Drive stop lights
Because stating it once just isn’t enough.
Jen Pfeiler 
The Point Staff 
Rebecca Elliott