Interview of a Dominican College Commuter

For this interview, I decided to interview a senior here at Dominican college who was a Communications major and a commuter.

She has commuted at Dominican for all four years and wished to stay anonymous. She is 21 years old and works part time and has her whole college career.I started off the interview by introducing myself and telling her that I was doing an interview about her time as a commuter and wanting to know more about her experience with it.

I started off the interview by asking her how she first decided she wanted to be a commuter since she did it right from the start of college. She said that she came to that decision  because right when she was about to start, she already knew that dorm life wasnt really something she saw herself doing, she liked the space and comfort that she got from living at home and having her own room and bathroom etc.

She also was able to get a car  with the help of her parents as she decided to commute because she lived about 25 min away from campus in New Jersey. She added  that commuting and having a car has also helped her with having a job. I asked her why she felt like that and she told me it was because she can go right after class, and she decided to pick a job that was closer to her home in New Jersey  in retail.

I followed up the question by asking if tuition was a factor in why she decided to commute and she said that it was in fact a big factor, when  she started school she really thought about it and realized that she could save so much more money by commuting and living at home as well as her thoughts on how she knew dorm life wasn’t for her and if anything she could always still hang out with others on campus.

I asked her if she felt as if she got the normal “college experience”  while being a commuter  and she answered by saying her experience wasn’t the ones like in the movies with living in a dorm having a roommate and partying all the time but she felt as if everyone’s college experience is different and while not what people think about  when they think of college life, her  was still something she enjoyed and would do again if given the chance to.

I then asked her if she participated in school activities and she admitted that, she felt as if she didn’t participate in as many and she would have liked to as she found herself going to class and then leaving to either go home and right to work. I asked her if it was something she would change if given the chance and she said especially after corona if given the chance to do one thing from her college experience over it would be to interact with the school activities  and other students more then she did.

I ended the interview by asking her if she would recommend commuting to incoming freshmen and she told me that she would tell each person to really think about what they would want as an individual and make their choice based on that as everyone is different. I then thanked her for her time and ended the interview.