Like most other college students coming hot off of their freshman year, I scrambled to find an internship this summer. I took advantage of my resources (thanks, dad) and landed a spot as a summer associate for a small company located in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Unfortunately for me, I live about an hour outside of New York City and on a student budget, so finding a place in the city was not really on the table. This left me with only one option: commuting. I was going to have to join the thousands of New Jerseyians, Connecticut-ites and Long-Islanders in the daily pilgrimage made to and from the Big Apple every single day.

The prospect seemed harmless; a lot of my friends were interning in the city so I would always have a buddy. Plus, I had seen my mom commute to and from the city every single day since I was in third grade, so how bad could it be? Commuting would give me the opportunity to read new books, meet new people on the train, and give me general time to unwind on my way to and from work. I would be home at a reasonable time and still be able to hang out with my friends. Needless to say, I quickly came to realize the true pains and traumas of commuting

IT’S EXPENSIVE

A roundtrip ticket from Princeton Junction to New York Penn is $30 - a monthly pass is $414 which translates to about 200 cups of ramen. Not to mention, the subway is a little more than $5 a day, and depending on the train station you get on at, parking ranges from $5-$25. That roughly translates to about $600 a month. Now, I don’t know about everyone else, but that constitutes a pretty heavy portion of my paycheck.

Commuters are like wildebeests

At Penn Station they announce the track number 10 minutes before the train is set to depart (for the most part). For those of you that are not familiar with the NJ transit section of Penn Station, it is literally a pit. The moment they announce the track number, there is a stampede. Despite the fact that there is still 10 minutes to catch the train, chances of you getting trampled are fairly high (I should know, I fell while getting on an escalator last week) Basically, you are Simba holding onto the branch for dear life.

“Quiet car” really means, “quiet train”

There is a general rule that all express trains follow the “quiet commute” rule. Meaning if you are on an express train from 6-10am or 4-8pm there is rules like no cellphone conversations, no music above a certain level, no loud conversations, etc. However, all walks of life travel in and out of New York every day, meaning not everyone is familiar with said rule. You would think it is no big deal, but believe me when I say I have witnessed many shouting matches across the car between the tired business man trying to sleep and the loud mother with a rambunctious son who is protecting her first amendment right (yeah it gets intense).

Finding a seat can be next to impossible

As a summer intern, I am a novice when it comes to the art of commuting. There are people who have been making the trip every day for a decade or more. Those people have perfected the art of commuting and somehow always end up with a seat, and then they hold it hostage. There have been many occasions where I am left standing in the awkward scary connecting part between the cars for the entirety of the trip. I’ve come to realize that it is an every-man-for-himself kind of deal. People will sit in the isle and place their bag in the window seat to prevent anyone else from sitting with them. They will make up mothers and friends that are “on their way” and leave you standing there to stare them down for the rest of the trip when their imaginary Meemaw happens to “miss the train.”

It’s way more time consuming than you originally expected

If there is any government agency that needs to get their act together, it’s NJ Transit. You would think a service that caters to over 955,000 people every day would be more functional, but I can say with 1000% certainty that I have been on delayed train every single day since I started my internship back in May. Whether it is 10 minutes or 90 minutes, there are delays up and down every NJT line every single day. And so, a 40-minute journey easily exceeds an hour because of “train traffic” and other technical issues.

Finally, it’s exhausting

Get ready to wake up at 6am to catch the 7:30 train. It’s like high school all over again, but instead of coming home and napping at 3, you get home at 7pm. For college kids, 7pm is the equivalent of noon, but for a working intern 7pm can easily feel like 11:30. After some time, you’ll stop seeing your friends on weeknights because you’ll be in bed by 10:30. It’s too hard to work and party at the same time, so give yourself a break and put your feet up - you’re a part of the adult world now.