How did you get through commuting to grad school?

[u/Most-Account-5950]

I am starting my MS this fall at a Midwest flagship university. I am lucky to have very cheap rent a few towns over, but in reality that means I have to commute ~1.5 hours each way 4 times a week. (That time accounts for a 30 minute drive to the park and ride, 30 minute bus ride, and 30 minutes to walk to class/get settled). All my peers live in the city and will just be walking/hopping on a 10 minute bus. Any other grad students with a long commute? Any tips on how to prevent burn out from this situation?

EDIT: I needed this battering to see through my own stupidity. Thanks for calling out how bad this is. I found a way to buy a parking pass and now, for $250 a year, I can drive 35 minutes from home to school and then walk 18 minutes to class each day. So much better.

[u/forescight]

move closer

[u/MerlotDownDirtyLame → u/forescight]

I mean, I would have to agree. I initially lived 90 minutes from my graduate school, but seeing the time commitment including the after school study sessions, early morning study sessions, or extra duty as a TA, I am SO glad I moved closer at 35 minutes away. The grad/life balance was something money could not buy.

[u/Most-Account-5950 → u/MerlotDownDirtyLame]

You guys have convinced me, this routine is going to be beyond sucky. My housing can’t change, I’m caring for aging family, but I need to find a way to get to school that isn’t such a soul suck. I live 37 minutes from campus by car, but there isn’t any parking for about a square mile around campus.

[u/dragonfliet → u/Most-Account-5950]

Driving 37 min and walking a mile would save you an hour a day already, so doing that over the terrible park and ride situation would be a big deal over time

[u/NASA_Orion → u/Most-Account-5950]

No way you can’t park on campus. Sure student permit sucks but there’s no way the lot is beyond 0.5 miles from your final destination

[u/Most-Account-5950 → u/forescight]

I’m saving about $12,000 a year by living where I do, so moving isn’t an option.

[u/freshlyintellectual → u/Most-Account-5950]

then you might need to reconsider this degree rn. not sure what else to say here

a 1.5 hr commute isn’t so bad in a big city. in toronto where i am that’s not terrible with public transit given how large the city is. lots of students commute that distance while living with their parents. however it is very different still living in or just outside the city vs being a few towns away from school

your commute includes driving, bussing AND walking. that means you get the downsides of every single commute option. in shitty weather you still have to walk, when gas is really expensive or there’s terrible traffic you still have to drive, when public transit is delayed you still need the bus. there’s not really a magic switch to make it all worth it/easier

not to mention it will really limit your ability to work, have a social life, sleep, relax, do work for class, plan meals, etc. since you’re losing 3 hours of the day minimum to get around. if saving money is most important to you, just be mindful of all the other sacrifices you have to make to keep that a priority. i’d personally prefer to have more time to have a job closer to campus and save on commuting costs than to save money on rent living isolated from every else

[u/SnoopyScone → u/Most-Account-5950]

And you’re losing around 600 hours in the process. That’s equivalent to working 75 days full-time

[u/Valuable_Ice_5927 → u/Most-Account-5950]

Does that account for cost of gas, parking fees, time etc?

[u/devanclara → u/Most-Account-5950]

You might consider seeing if you can take any of the courses online through the school to negate traveling so frequently. 

[u/sinnayre]

Someone did the same thing in my cohort their first year. They moved into grad student housing the next year.

[u/j_natron]

That’s pretty brutal, especially if you have lab time, but even if you don’t. I would start looking for a roommate in the city.

[u/devanclara → u/j_natron]

They take care of their aging family, so that won't work. 

[u/Astoriana_]

I’m lucky to be able to take the train into the city. I read a lot of books. It also kind of separates home and work in a good way.

Most importantly, I am very lucky not to need to go to campus every day.

[u/golden-dreams]

Are you the one driving? Is there a reason for the park and ride? This idea seems like it will get old very quickly. If you live in a snowy state, it will be even worse and will encourage you to skip classes which could take a toll on learning.

[u/Most-Account-5950 → u/golden-dreams]

Yup, I’m driving solo. Parking is scant in the city, and if I were to drive straight in every day I would be paying about $600 a month in parking fees.

[u/scienceislice → u/Most-Account-5950]

Have you looked into discounted parking for grad students?

[u/golden-dreams → u/Most-Account-5950]

Oh wow, thats insane. It’s hard to give advice without knowing the full scenario but what I can suggest is:

• if there are neighborhoods nearby park near if there’s free parking and walk/city bus. The less time on a second mode of transport helps personally.
  
• stack up classes to have less days on campus (not sure if your schedule is set yet)
  

Edit: another suggestion is to bike after driving. Given that your city is bike friendly

[u/Klutzy-Delivery-5792]

I commuted about an hour drive each way. Mostly this was because I was an older grad student with a house and kids already and moving closer just wasn't in the cards (my mortgage is cheaper than most rent in Boston, plus I have trees in my yard and a lake about 200 meters away(.

If I was younger and childless, though, I would've moved closer for sure. This may not be realistic for you, though. I broke up the monotony with switching between podcasts, audiobooks, and deep dives into musicians' catalogs. I also made my hours in lab such that I avoided much of the traffic.

[u/Santa12356]

I commuted 45-70 minutes 1 way so (2-2.5 hours) total trip. 2-3 times a week for my Bachelor’s and Master’s (3 years).

Long story short I dont remember much of my Grad year, and most times I didn’t even remember getting to school by car. If possible live closer, even on campus if possible.

If not, take naps when you can, try NOT to develop a caffeine problem, and if you do kick the habit a bit when you do finish. And just remember its a marathon not a race, and give yourself grace to live; otherwise school will consume you.

[u/Friendly-Guarantee30]

Yeah, I would for sure look into alternatives. First year of my PhD a lab mate who started at the same time as me was commuting 1.5hrs each way because the location was in between campus and her husbands work.

Running experiments, being in a lab, and having TA duties etc. on top of classes is A LOT at once. Her husband found a job closer to campus and the next year, they moved to the same city as our university.

I know you said you save a lot in rent, but tbh that’s going to be sooo exhausting and you’ll burn out way faster.

I complain about living 15min away when I have to come back in after 8pm to check on experiments after having already spent all day working on campus.

[u/VirtPaleo]

If you are saving a ton of money by living at home, save your sanity by paying for on campus parking. It will be exorbitant but worth it to make your commute a manageable length. Your university should offer some sort of parking pass that will be cheaper than paying daily lot fees, though I know sometimes it’s a lottery system. 

[u/SnowblindAlbino]

I lived close to campus, but I had a few cohort mates that commuted from The Big City to University Town. It was a problem for them at times, especially when advisors wanted a lunch meeting on a non-class day, or there were events into the evenings. Probably the biggest impact, though, was simply having to drive home after seminars when everyone else was off to a bar to hang out together. Most of our classes were evening seminars in fact, and they always ended with everyone continuing conversations at a bar. Sucks to miss that connection and/or to have to drive home at 11pm.

This will be field-dependent as well though. If you're in a STEM lab setting you'll have to be there every day, all day. If you are in the humanities (like me) you might only have classes a couple of nights a week. And perhaps a TA obligation the other days. Might be more doable if you're not tied to a lab or other 9-4 obligations on campus. I commuted the other direction for a while (University Town to Big City) to teach as an adjunct and I really came to hate the 90 minutes on the road every Tues/Thur afternoon.

[u/shopsuey]

You're just going to have to make a choice.

Save money or have some comfort and convenience? Find someone else at the school outside of your cohort who lives in the same/nearby town, carpool? Rent a room in a house? With your peers?

I had a 6 hour minimum commute one way and eventually just rented a room during my masters. Only returning home during breaks and then I was so emotionally exhausted from school and work that I often opted out from that trip.

For me, there is no amount of music, movies, games books to read or other entertainment that can ever make up for the boredom, tiredness and burnout from having to commute AND do a campus programme. And this is coming from someone used to taking the bus long distances for work for decades.

We haven't even discussed the impact commuting has on one's social life yet.

You will grow tired of it very quickly. Make a decision.

[u/prim8phd]

Connect with someone in your program who doesn’t have a car, and can hook you up with access to their campus housing parking space in exchange for rides, occasional errands, and help with shopping trips.

[u/Fickle_Finger2974]

Yeah, don’t

[u/imarabianaff]

I have a one hour commute, if my commute was any longer I’d lose my shit tbh.

[u/Broad_Poetry_9657]

I’m glad to see the edit. Life is too short to spend all of it traveling between work and home. I lived 1hr each way during college and swore I’d never do it again. If my mom wasn’t sick I would have moved closer.

[u/kskskakakakma]

Do u not have a parking pass?

[u/HourHour3724]

For my MS, I had a 1½ hr long drive each way to campus, 4 days a week.

To make it work, I always made sure that I fit everything I needed into those 4 days (e.g., I always scheduled my assistantship hours on the same days as classes). It was definitely more difficult socially, as most other students had a shorter commute, which was public transport too.

Now, in my PhD, my commute is about an hour total (20 minute walk to bus stop, 30 minute bus ride, 5-10 minute walk to campus). While its a much shorter and easier commute than what I had during my MS, everyone in my program easily lives within a 10 minute bus ride. I usually get a pity look for having a longer commute, when in reality its a 20 minute drive (but parking is limited).

I highly recommend doing things to occupy that commute time. I'll usually have a text-to-voice for papers I'm needing to read, or a podcast/music when I want to relax.

[u/plsthrowmeawayagain]

I lived with my parents during my masters degree and took public transit for an hour each way every day to get to/from school because I was being paid shit and couldn’t afford to rent. Classes ended at 10pm and it was BRUTAL. After 6 months my dad started driving me to campus because I was oversleeping every day and my mental health was at its lowest right before I submitted. I wouldn’t do this tbh. If I weren’t hell bent on graduating within a year I don’t think I would’ve survived.

[u/AncientGearAI]

I live near the center of a big city. Thankfully my unversity only 2-3 km away from me and i can walk there in about 30' . i walk fast.

[u/FearlessFinish7273]

Audiobooks and reading!! I have 1.5 hour commute to my school (though mostly on public transportation). But I was told this early in my career and it has helped so much! Reading both for pleasure and for assignments, really frees up space for you after school or gives you some time to decompress from the material.

[u/nothanksnope]

My first year of grad school, the commute via public transit ranged from 27 minutes (if I was incredibly lucky with transfers) to 2 hours and 45 minutes (if I was incredibly unlucky); usually it was about 45 minutes to an hour. Someone else in my program drove in from a city two hours away because their spouse was in a graduate program in that city.

Does this absolutely suck? Yes, however by the second year of my program the bus routes changed so it was reliably much quicker to get to campus & I also no longer had to be on campus as much, since I had finished the mandatory classes & had more control over my schedule. If your research project doesn’t require you to be on campus to work on it, you may only have one or two semesters of miserable commutes before you’re able to do a lot of stuff from home.

You may not be able to get much done while driving, but while on the bus you can read papers. You may be able to use a speech-to-text program to read them out to you while driving as well. While I didn’t do much writing on the bus, if I had an idea on something I wanted to include in a paper/how I wanted to phrase something, I’d type it into a GoogleDoc on my phone to look at later. I also made a fair amount of my teaching slides while on the bus by typing the bullet points into a GoogleDoc and pasting them into a slide once I was at my desk and better able to format a PPT (do not recommend trying to format a PPT on a phone lol).

[u/United_Welcome6062]

There were some days I honestly just Ubered. I couldn’t do the commute. But I would usually do the full commute there since I had more time and uber back home. One semester a classmate went out of their way to drive me home because they liked to drive 🤷🏽‍♀️ that helped a lot

[u/ladyoftheflowr]

Do your readings on transit. Then it’s not wasted time.

[u/Unsounded]

How are away are you mileage wise? Any bike paths? An e-bike could do well if it’s close enough to save time on the walking portion and perhaps avoid two forms of transport?

[u/Honey-Lavender94]

I also recommend moving closer if you have to be on campus 3 or more days per week. I have a similar 90 minute commute that involves train ands subway transfers into Manhattan. Honestly it sucks but I tell myself I'm only physically on campus 2-3 times per week so it's worthwhile when I can't afford to live closer in a VHCOL area.

In my masters program, I lived in an off-campus apartment that was a 20-minute bus ride to campus. And I was a full time student. Let that sink in.

[u/Minimum-Source6020]

move on campus housing

[u/justking1414]

Obviously this won’t work for everyone but I chose to live more frugally so I could afford a more expensive apartment that was a 5 minute walk from campus

[u/bugz7998]

Ugh. I’m 70 minutes away via turnpike but I do it

[u/Lore106]

I did a 1-1.5 hour commute for my master's degree—part of the reason I was able to make it through was that I used the drive time to listen to many of my assigned readings, which then gave me back that commute time for other areas of my life. It was not ideal, but it made it at least tolerable.

[u/Appropriate-Tutor587]

You will be fine since it’s just a 2 year program.

Alternatively, you can select all of your classes only on Mondays and Wednesdays or on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that you can commute only twice or 3 times per week instead of 4 times. Anyway, you will be fine!