Last semester, an email popped up in my inbox regarding an opportunity to serve as a commuter assistant here at Stony Brook University. A commuter assistant is a returning student who volunteers their time to mentoring and advising incoming freshmen and transfer commuter students to help them adjust to the changes that come with starting fresh at Stony Brook. CAs are good resources for students to ask any and all questions about student life on campus or opportunities to get involved and serve as friends and familiar faces on campus so that new students who commute to campus don't feel as alone at the beginning of their Stony Brook experiences.

As I read this email and saw that I had a few days to submit an application if I was interested, I decided to give it a shot. I had already gotten involved in a few organizations on campus but wanted to improve my networking skills and become a little more social on campus than I had previously been. Becoming a CA would give me the opportunity to meet tons of new people and help others, which I've always genuinely enjoyed doing. After applying and completing the interview process, I was informed that I was selected to serve as a commuter assistant for the upcoming school year.

At the first meeting after being selected for the program, I walked into a room full of every commuter assistant, new and returning, and felt immediately intimidated. Everyone was talking to one another and I realized I didn't know a single person. I was a little shy and didn't know what to do at first, which made me skeptical as to whether or not I'd even be a good commuter assistant.

A few weeks later, we completed a few days of training and by the end, I could honestly say that I made 40 new friends. I didn't know how training would go as I haven't always been the best in situations where I'm sitting in a room full of people that I don't know, but meeting these other students and creating bonds with them helped me overcome that initial feeling of intimidation and nervousness. Training made me much more confident that I could serve as an efficient mentor for new students.

In the past few weeks, I've started to get paired with new students who requested CAs, and have gotten the opportunity to correspond and meet with several of these new students and help them with their transition before their first semester at SBU even begins. The commuter assistant program is a great resource for new commuter students at Stony Brook, as it gives them a resource in which they can rely on a fellow student to point them in the direction of all of the resources they will need to be successful, as well as giving student-to-student advice and helping to ease the nerves that come with starting fresh at any school. This program is designed for the benefit of new students, but I truly feel that this program has helped me as an individual just as much as it has helped those new students.

Aside from making friends with other CAs and putting myself out there more than I typically do, the opportunity to genuinely help other students and make a difference in their college transitions gives me the feeling of self-worth that I didn't know I was missing in college. It's easy to plug in earbuds and drown out your surroundings when you're walking around a big campus with 26,000 other students. Sometimes it can make you feel so small like you're a little fish in a giant ocean. It can make you feel like you don't serve any particular purpose there like you're not really affecting anyone else by being there.

Being a part of this program allows me to help new students and listen to their concerns, learn about who they are as individuals, and feel the appreciation that comes with being specifically chosen by those students to help them succeed in their new endeavors. There is a great level of satisfaction that comes with giving a student an answer to something they weren't sure about or helping them to get involved in a club or organization that they were stressed about. Knowing you've made an impact on someone else's day in a positive manner is extremely rewarding. It gives me a sense of importance.

I've received messages from new students that say, "Thank you so much, you've helped me tremendously," and "I can't thank you enough, you are truly an altruist." Reading messages like these makes me feel like I am doing something truly great, and to me, the greatest reward of this program has to be the gratitude and appreciation that these students express towards me, as it makes me feel like I am really helping others in an effective way. It motivates me to want to do even more, and help more people in many more ways.

I am thankful for the commuter assistant program because it gave me a sense of purpose and has reminded me that if I put in the effort and put myself out there, I can make a difference in other peoples' lives and be the helping hand that others may need. The commuter assistant program is an amazing opportunity for both incoming commuter students and the commuter assistants themselves. This is my purpose here and I'm grateful to have found it.