“I feel like I age ten years every week. Oh, I’d protest if I wasn’t so tired. And if I didn’t have a bus to catch”.
Shelley Stafford | Staff Writer
MONDAY
Time Spent on Bus: 220 minutes
My whole life is a bus stop in the dark. Or so if often seems. My only comfort on a Monday morning is a late start. Well, what constitutes a late start for me. My first lecture doesn’t start until eleven, so I don’t have to drag myself out of bed until seven. In fact, it was almost bright this morning when I left the house. “Em, student, Dublin, 10 journey please?” I mumbled as I handed over my fare to the (slightly disgruntled, but who isn’t?) bus driver. I graciously accepted my five day prison sentence and occupied my seat. A friend of mine once compared commuting to living a “half-life.” And as the miles rolled away under my feet, and I watched children running disjointedly towards schools, and business men and women power-walking to the office in pristine suits and garishly white runners, I knew I couldn’t possibly agree with her more. The ride home was much the same, of course, trapped in double decker purgatory for the best part of seventy kilometres. The entire world was bathed in navy and street lamp tangerine, the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre signs rising like shark fins from the swarms of traffic. Half lives always seemed to be more mysterious, and desirable than this. Why did you lie, Spiderman?
TUESDAY
Time Spent on Bus: 210 minutes.
My alarm sounded at 5:30am. I don’t think I will ever accustom to rising on the sharp end of six o’clock. Deposited at the frosty bus shelter at exactly thirty three minutes past six, I stared blearily into the middle distance until that red setter emblazoned monstrosity pulled up. It was in that moment I realised that I was her bitch, not the other way around. As I gazed out the window I caught my own reflection staring back, bug-eyed, bewildered and clinging to a travel mug like a deranged possum. My sole consolation is the sunrise. Clementine and pomegranate lay streaked across the horizon, a hazy dewy mist floating wondrously over endless emerald fields. Cars strung up like fairy lights along the slip roads. As the dawn breaks, the sky contorts itself into billowing slate clouds with seeping dusky pink fractures. In the end it always falls away, leaving yet another grey grizzly day in it’s wake. Still, I think I’d rather be asleep. I’m sure that even sunrises lose all their glory if you’re subject to them, day-in-day-out. I’ll soon learn, I suppose.
WEDNESDAY
Time Spent on Bus: 210 minutes.
Commuting makes you bitter. Well, it makes me bitter, I can’t really speak for everyone else. I inadvertently scowl every-time I hear someone moan about how it takes “twenty FIVE” minutes to get in to college in the mornings, or whine incessantly about how incomprehensibly difficult it is to get up at a quarter past eight. I’m almost certain that commuting has warped my way of thinking. I am now (somewhat) obsessed with traffic lights and bus lanes, I groan and reach near implosion when it’s three minutes past the hour and the bus is still vegetating in Busaras. I even view the world differently now. As we are stationary at yet another stop in the middle of nowhere, I can’t help but notice how the trees stand stock still, rigid and stubborn, their spindly branches flayed in annoyance. I can see how the roads, like tarmac rivers, sever and snake their way through the mounds of grassy flesh. Sometimes when I’m stuck thinking these things I have to ask myself, where and what am I being driven to? Trinity College, or insanity?
This is the lifestyle being lived by an ever increasing number of students
THURSDAY
Time Spent on the Bus: 200 minutes
Another morning, another travel mug purse kerfuffle, ie, the method used to root your bus ticket out of your purse, whilst maintaining control of a cup of scalding hot tea and a cumbersome rucksack. It’s not elegant, but it works. Besides, it’s still pitch black outside, and the only witnesses I ever have are my fellow drowsy commuters, who are too tired and too pre-occupied with their own methods of ticket retrieval to care. I tried to read on the way in this morning. Tried, and failed. Half conscious in the half light I squinted at the tiny font and couldn’t ascertain whether it was in Times New Roman, Wingdings or Ancient Greek. When I put the book away I could scarcely remember even opening it. It’s also difficult to concentrate when you’re being violently shaken every couple of minutes by bouts of ferocious sneezing – mine, as well as everyone else’s. As if free with your box of “Commuting: The No Social Life Cereal!” you receive a special shiny dose of the never-ending head-cold. I swear, I’ve been ill more in the last three months than I’ve been in the past three years. I’ve been reduced from the invisible immune system to the girl who is forever sniffling and wielding a handkerchief. At least I made it home for dinner today. That’s something of a rarity.
FRIDAY
Time Spent on Bus: 190 minutes
Friday afternoons are the only time I have in the week to attempt to cultivate my flailing social life. Not that, at this stage, I’m in any fit state to deal with people. Weary, exhausted and teetering far too close to hysterics, I am a walking nuclear hazard. My brain switches off at an arbitrary point on Thursday afternoon, everything after that is auto-pilot. This isn’t what they advertise in the college prospectuses. By the time I boarded the bus this evening I was so drained that even climbing the stairs was a gargantuan effort. Here I am, stuck in middle class limbo, not qualifying for a grant, but not quite well off enough to be able to move closer either. It’s only going to get worse, as, once again fees go up and grant levels go down. This is the lifestyle being lived by an ever increasing number of students, and let me assure you, it is not what constitutes a “life”. Little sleep, no social life, no free time. Weekends are spent catching up on work you can’t get done during the week because you’re so utterly done in that you simply cannot keep your eyes open. I feel like I age ten years every single week. Oh, I’d protest if I wasn’t so tired. And if I didn’t have a bus to catch.
