Student Life
by Amanda Tanner

Commuting VS Residence | Pros & Cons

A student asked me a really relevant and refreshing question this past month: “Should I commute and stay home with my family or should I move out when I get into university?”

Shoutout to this person for giving me a really good blog idea (copy-pasting most of my response here): the pros and cons of commuting VS living in residence.

*Disclaimer: I have only been a commuter in my past 3 years at Glendon so I’ve gathered the pros and cons of residence-life from friends! Let’s get into it:

COMMUTING

 PROS

 CONS
  • You are forcefully given the gift of time to destress or get some reading done
  • You don’t feel like your life revolves around school because you get to move around the city more
  • Possibly avoid having an unpleasant experience in residence (rare but it happens)
  • You save that $$$
  • You have a support system at home (this one is super important)
  • Mom-made-meals
  • A lot of time and energy might be wasted during the commute (although refer to pro #1, you can get creative with your time)
  • You don’t get the “dorm room university experience”
  • You may feel you don’t have enough freedom when you live at home
  • You have to rely on public transportation (which means waking up earlier probably)
  • The weather may dictate whether or not you will go to class

RESIDENCE

PROS

CONS
  • Fastest commute ever
  • Make friends easily as opposed to when you commute and miss out on opportunities (although you can also do Frosh and make friends that way too – Queianna wrote an awesome post about it last week)
  • Attend more events and get more involved since you live on campus
  • Night-long study sessions with friends
  • You may miss your family, including your pet
  • You don’t save as much money as you would living at home
  • You may not enjoy the experience (depending on your circumstances)
  • Less privacy
  • You may start to feel like school is taking over your life since you get used to living around academics and that study-life

A lot of these pros and cons should also be taken with a grain of salt because it all depends on your own taste in that university-experience and circumstance in life. How far will your commute if you stay at home? Car or public transportation? Can you live on your own with roommates off campus too? Is that an option you’re willing to explore?

I definitely did my research before making any decisions because I knew that one like this will have an affect on my university experience for a whole year if not more. I’m a commuter myself, and so when I wanted that residence experience I looked for other inexpensive opportunities that would satisfy my FOMO like Explore where I lived with roommates in a dorm for 2 months over the summer. Plus, I live in Scarborough so the commute wouldn’t have been too bad.

It all depends on you and your circumstances.

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below or shoot me a personal message! 🙂

See you next week on Mondays with Manda!

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