0 0 6 M Y T U R N BeKoind t Comuters We may have our creature comforts,j but there's no escape from the r questions and family obligations BY CHRISTOPHER M. BELLITTO commute to school have it easy. There's a washing You may think that those of us who live at home and j machine with no wait, a new tube of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet and, most important, a fridge stocked with food someone else has paid for. Not only that, but the phone bill is usually taken care of and dinner's sitting in the microwave even late at night. That's not college, you sneer-that's permanent adolescence. So maybe we look like pampered kids, but it's not that simple. The college student living at home leads a paradox- ical life. Like you, we came to college to learn about our- selves; self-exploration is as much a part of our education as organic chem. Yet it's hard to maintain our independence when Mom or Dad can't shake the parental instincts for surveillance. Nor can family obligations be avoided easily. What do I do, for example, when my parents' anniversary falls the day before my finals? The truth is, being a student - who hasn't left the nest can be just as difficult as trying to get along with a roommate you don't like. Dear Abby: Our problems can be complex. To some extent, we're second-class citizens in the social world: it's tough to enjoy clubs, frat parties and dances when you have to drive back home or catch the last bus. Ditto when you realize you can't make the only review class for business law because it ends late. But that's not the critical issue: after all, every- body's gotstanding invites to crash with friends in the dorm. The real problem is that we lose out on the results of those activities: a sense of camaraderie that springs from nights spent cramming for industrial psychology, gossiping about who's sleeping with whom and, after most of the favorite topics of both George Will and Dear Abby are exhausted, sharing the heart-to-heart realization that graduation is closer than we think. True, we commuters can join in every now and again, but we can't fall into the day-and-night rhythm of collegial introspection. There's a whole group of us who'll never be able to appreciate the lifetime bonds of "The Big Chill" as much as our dorming peers. Then there's the issue of budgeting time. Commuters have much more structured days than dormers; we have to. Many of us live as we do to save money, and we devote a lot of hours to jobs that can help defray tuition. Of course, working out our convoluted schedules may teach more about efficien- cy than all the freshman workshops on note-taking. Who else but a commuter could perfect the art of plotting dis- creet-probability distribution on a train hurtling through a 64 NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS dark tunnel while some sleaze with Mick Belker breath hulks down over your textbook? And sharing one bathroom with parents preparing for work, little brothers late for school and a sister rinsing stockings in the sink makes the three-minute shower sprint a useful skill that rivals almost anything gleaned from a class. True, all this planning be- comes moot when the 40-minute trip takes two hours be- cause of a track fire and a wino who gets caught in the door. Leftover lasagna: There's a myth that commuters are lucky because they can leave the jungle of school and go home. Actually, you dormers may have it easier here: at least you can get away with screamingout of thewindow and working off tension at a party that's never hard to find. When we have a bad stretch, there's no escape; the endofafrustrating day is just the beginning. First there's the long ride home where, on public transportation, the heaters and air condi- tioners seem to operate on Argentina's schedule of seasons. Then there are the reminders from parents which, however well intentioned, are still nagging. How can we feel "on our own" when we're constantly told: "Call if you'll be late"? And of course there's Grandma, who starts heating up the leftovers when we're three blocks away, sits to watch us eat them and then clucks that we're too skinny and not getting enough sleep. Even if the lasagna is major league, it might be even nicer just to be left ALONE sometimes. And when the breakaway point does come, leave-taking is more painful for those of us who've never really left. Stu- dents who move out of the house for college can enjoy a separate peace; they build another base of operations on campus. True, all families have a hard time saying goodbye to the child who goes off to school at 18, but by graduation they've gotten over it and come to view you as an adult with your own life. Commuters are not nearly so detached. There are some family situations we can't ignore. It's the differ- ence between returning for Thanksgiving to discover how old Grandpa has gotten and living with him, watching him die a little more each day. That makes the parting at gradua- tion even more poignant-for both families and students. The living arrangement is hard on our elders, too, since they're torn between stepping back to allow us autonomy and jumping in where they always have before. When school is miles away, parents can't see their kids staying up until 6 a.m. to type a paper or letting loose with a keg-though I'm sure bothsituations are vividly imagined during many alate night's insomnia. Naturally, at home your movement is watched. I can appreciate that my mother worries if I don't make it home by a certain hour, but I build up some tense moments myself if I can't stay late at the library doing research for tomorrow's oral presentation. "I don't even know you anymore,",is a frustrated parent's response to a student who, of'necessity, sometimes uses home like a board- ing house. But we're supposed to get to know our profs, make new friends and be exposed to new fields-and that can only be accomplished when we're on our own. We are a special breed: young adults who are enthusiastic about the independence of being in college yet remain to some degree children in our family's eyes-and to some extent, perhaps, in our own. I still believe that I'm receiving a top-notch education, though I'll be the first to admit-and lament-that I'm also missing out on some of the traditional collegiate experiences. So don't think of commuters as lesser beings or as softies who are taking the easy way out. We're just caught between the rock of academia and the sometimes hard place of home, struggling with the age-old problem of serving two masters. Christopher M. Bellitto, a senior journalism student, penned this on the number 5 train to New York University. OCTOBEI 1986 Let's get it together ... buckle up. ""