By JOHN SLAGG
Contributing Writer
With Easter Break just around the corner, many students once again will have to make the trek back home for the weekend. For some it is a fifteen-minute drive and for others it is a nine-hour train ride. Transportation affects college students in many different ways.
Some commuters like Shannen Moore, a junior from Clifton Park, needs to pay as much as 150 dollars a week in gas money for the daily commute to school. Moore works two jobs that contribute to her vehicle costs and both interfere with her academic and social life. She would like to live on campus but that in itself is too expensive.
One transfer student, Teresa Schiavo, prefers to living on campus as opposed to last year when she lived in an apartment. She said “being on campus is much more convenient and the parking is more secure.” She is a fifth year senior that lives forty-five minutes away in Lake George. Schiavo has a car on campus and drives home for breaks.
One disadvantage of travel is the raised gas and ticket prices during the holiday season. A freshman from Colorado Springs, Timber McCarthy, can attest to this. She normally buys her tickets a month or two early. Some of the holiday tickets prices can be around $700. To go home she needs to take six to eight hour flights that refuel in Chicago. Sometimes the hassle isn’t worth it. McCarthy decided to stay in Albany during spring break with a friend rather than “blow seven hundred dollars on a ticket for a week long break.”
For some, long distance travel isn’t as bad as it seems.
Sophomore, Alexis Williams, takes a nine-hour Amtrak train to Columbus, Ohio to go home. Despite not having a car on campus, she said it isn’t that bad. Distance is one of the many factors that play into traveling. Williams says that a round trip is about $120. A round trip to New York City or Boston is about $80. Trains and planes have the convenience of avoiding traffic but delays, stops, and increased ticket prices are always annoyances.
Figuring out how to go somewhere is just another challenge that college students need to learn about and get acquainted with before graduation. After college, many alumni typically have to travel for their careers.
Learning how to go places on your own is a necessary burden for most college students. Traveling represents the reason most high school seniors choose go to college and live on campus. Some travel to go somewhere new to learn and experience new things.
When asked why she decided to go school on the other side of the country McCarthy replied “I had never been to New York so I decided to live the complete college experience and try everything new, all at once.”
