On Commuting

Traveling to school and work takes up a hefty chunk of my day.

Well, it used to at least.

Queens College is a grand total of 1 hour away from where I live, and I take 3 trains and a bus to get there. I did this almost every day for the past 3 years.

At first it didn't bother me at all; I felt really cool "commuting" to school every day and getting out of Manhattan. But recently, it started to hit me. I started to dread the long and tedious commute.

Thankfully, I no longer have to commute to college every day. I now work part-time in Woodside, Queens, only 30 minutes and two trains away from home, and I only do the dreadful commute to college once a week.

What a difference!

Today, another employee at work shared with me that he lives in Spanish Harlem and it also only takes him 30 minutes to travel to Woodside. But he said, "it takes me over an hour to get to Washington Heights, and that's even closer to where I live than Woodside!"

"It's true," I concured, "it takes me close to an hour and 3 trains to reach the Lower East Side from my neighborhood, and that's fewer miles away than Woodside!"

I find it so mind-boggling that traveling on public transportation to another borough can take almost half the time as traveling within the same borough.

I am so grateful that I work somewhere directly off a train line; it cuts my traveling time in half, and I get to work cool, calm and collected. 

Perhaps I will write about Woodside in the future. I did some exploring and the neighborhood is quite nice!