Life as a Commuter Student

One corner of my room! I love how much light I get!

Don’t miss Part 1!

School started shortly after we moved into the apartment and I only had time to get my clothes unpacked and my bed set up. It was a struggle to feel at home when the apartment didn’t have any personal touches. However, it only took a few weeks to move most of my things in–although, we are still in the process of decorating. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with all the space. For the first time I had a living room that was mine; mine to throw my coat down on, or leave my computer out in, or to curl up on the couch and read for hours! I also loved having a kitchen and took to baking something new every week–just because I could!

It hasn’t been all fun though. I don’t have a car and having to bus or metro to campus is annoying, especially in 30 degree weather. I’m lucky that I can get rides from my roommate and friends but I hate asking them to go out of their way because it feels like a burden. I also didn’t anticipate the loneliness of living off campus. When a snowstorm hit a few weeks ago a lot of my friends on campus camped out together in the dark (oops power outage) but I was stuck in my apartment alone! It is a difficult adjustment from being surrounded (next door, above, and below) by friends like I was last year and while abroad.

I like living off campus but I don’t like commuting. I love having my own space and the ability to host dinners, have my boyfriend over as late as I want, and keep more than one six-pack of beer in my fridge (not that I keep beer in my fridge–ew). I think that there comes a point in every person’s life when they need to be on their own, living under their own rules. When I moved out of my parent’s house at 18 I gained some measure of freedom and now, having moved out of the dormitories and away from the ever-watchful gaze of res. life, I’ve gained a little bit more. The only downside is having to get to campus but I’m well aware that as soon as the weather warms up I will enjoy the bike ride to school or the walk to the bus!

I still think that if possible every student should live on campus, in a dorm for at least one semester. Trust me, you will receive a wealth of experience that is impossible to get at any other time in your life!

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Why I Became a Commuter Student

Empty frames recently hung, waiting for art to fill them.

I never planned to commute to Marymount. I moved on to the campus in August of 2007 and planned to live there, in one dorm or another, until the day I graduated. I spent much of my three years living on campus complaining (as college students do) about the bullshit bureaucracy that is residence life, the archaic rules that meant my boyfriend couldn’t be in my room past 2AM, and the dreaded fire drills. However, I knew that living on campus was part of the college experience. When I moved out of my dorm freshman year to return home for the summer I had the sense that I was ticking something off a life checklist; lived on a college campus–check.

Then I went abroad.

I won’t go into the amazing experience that studying in London was (I will, however, refer you here). Instead I’ll comment on the liberating feeling it gave me. I lived in a “dorm” but there weren’t R.A.s (resident assistants); there was no one breathing down my neck. I had a kitchen and I went grocery shopping every week and cooked my own meals every day. I began to dread the return to the dormitories. I thought of the crowd (several hundred people in the same building), the ickyness of having to share bathrooms and showers with 20+ other girls, and the boring old routine of eating pre-prepared meals in the dining hall.

All of this dread was bubbling up inside of me but it wasn’t until my study abroad roommate, Ellie, suggested the idea of finding an apartment off campus together that I realized that living off campus was an option! We searched and searched and eventually found the perfect place! It was like a knot in my stomach had come undone. I began to look forward to my return to the United States and to Marymount proper. I was excited to have a living room to decorate and a kitchen to of my very own to cook in!

Ellie and I moved in January 1 of this year…

Check back in a few days for how I like commuting! (Part II is now up.)

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Controversy on the Catwalk

ph. Megan Beattie (thanks!)

This flier is the reason I wanted to go to this year’s Portfolio in Motion: All Doll’d Up. I had never been to the school’s annual fashion show, nor had I paid it much attention but this flier (a response to the email below) made me want to go; yay for controversy.

Small font, I know (click to enlarge.) The important line is: ". . . make every effort to move your car from the garage and faculty lot by 4:30 PM." That's right, even faculty don't get to park on campus.

As a friend to a few fashion merch majors, I have respect for the effort that went into organizing the show, as well as the work that went into designing and creating the looks showcased. However, I am a student at Marymount and do not like the fact that this fashion show took precedence over EVERYTHING! A friend of mine who works at the gym says that the fitness center was randomly closed some evenings because the organizers of the fashion show were using it. The entire downstairs rec gym is closed for weeks before the fashion show as the stage is built. On top of that, during the week before finals they closed the parking lot to Marymount students so the school could provide valet parking to all the rich and influential guests of the dinner and special Portfolio in Motion presentation Thursday night (the one where fashion designer Isabel Toledo was honored as Designer of the Year).

In an effort to be fair I decided I wanted to attend the fashion show; that way people couldn’t dismiss this post as the random scribbling of a “hater.” So I found tickets (thanks, Jordana) and I found a date (thanks, Megan) and I found an outfit (all black with pink and black striped thigh high socks; thanks sockdreams). I went to the Friday night show and was impressed. The show was awesome. The music was fun and the models walked fabulously (only one was a little too enthusiastic—probably due to Tyra encouraging women to be “fierce”). The transitions went well and I loved the creepy music that played in between each scene. The makeup was insane: crazy, long fake eyelashes and super bright lipstick and eye shadow.

Black, gray, red! I die. I want to order these suits for the boyf right now!

I was impressed by a lot of the designs. The menswear by Allison Jordan (photo above) was fantastic. The design was great, I loved the colors, and the tailoring looked good from where I was sitting. My favorite design was by Karyn Catania (photo below). Honestly, I would steal all three of those coats and wear them every day. There were a few outfits that reminded me of Lady Gaga (or Alexander McQueen) and a few that looked like they could be found on the racks of your local Forever 21. All in all, I enjoyed the show and everything complemented everything else (stage, makeup, music).

I love the cream one the most of all!

That being said, the show could have been handled so much better. There was no reason to inconvenience the rest of Marymount (especially the week before finals). There are locker rooms right next to the fitness center that the models could have used for changing during practices and meetings could have been held in the rec gym—there is no need to close the fitness center on any nights but the night of the show. The fact that the rec gym is closed for a few weeks is no big deal as long as students are allowed access to the other gym upstairs in the Lee Center. Finally, the parking issue: attention Marymount—the week before finals is the last time we have classes, often times the last day is a review session, which is one of the most important classes of the semester. This means that when you screw with our parking, a lot of students may be unable to get to their last classes. There is no reason to hold the super fancy dinner on Thursday night. Why not move the dinner to Saturday night? There are a lot less cars on campus over the weekend anyway, and you won’t have to stress out students by making them worry about parking.

Hopefully Marymount will wise up about this next year and there will be no complaints about the fashion show. Portfolio in Motion is a great time and there shouldn’t have to be any negative press about it.

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ph. Sarah Phillips. Please give credit to me–I strained my neck getting these shots.

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