Congrats Triton commuters, you\u2019ve made it to college \u2014 except you live off campus and your classes are probably more than an hour away from home with traffic. Whether you\u2019re a frantic first-year or a continuing student looking to survive yet another quarter, you\u2019ve come to the right place. With a year of commuting under my belt, rest assured you can trust me! Before forgetting to pay for parking on the ParkMobile app and getting hit with that $85 ticket or mindlessly doomscrolling during the entire five-hour gap between your classes, consult this guide!\u00a0<\/p>\n
As you may know, UC San Diego has little on-campus parking for commuter students. For free all-day parking, I recommend parking<\/a> at nearby trolley stations like Balboa Avenue or Nobel Drive and taking the trolley to UCSD Central Campus Station. Keep in mind that most stations\u2019 parking spots fill up by 8 a.m.<\/p>\n Though San Diego\u2019s public transit system is incredibly convenient, its main downside is safety. Coming from someone who\u2019s seen just about everything that can go down at a trolley station: Stay vigilant! Carry pepper spray or a personal safety alarm, keep your headphones off and use the buddy system at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the trolley isn\u2019t your cup of tea, finding workarounds can be tough. This year, parking on campus has become increasingly more difficult as parking lots are reserved for upper division students only.<\/p>\n However, parking on campus isn\u2019t impossible. For freshmen or sophomores, I recommend trying to plead your case to UCSD Transportation Services<\/a> in hopes of obtaining a student permit, known as an S permit. To do this you\u2019ll need to apply for a parking exception.<\/a> As a junior or senior you can also park in D lots, off-campus discount lots. From there, take my tried and true: the Regents Express,<\/a> a shuttle that runs Monday through Friday until 10 p.m., taking you to campus in just six minutes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n By now I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard of the different parking permits available on campus, but what is the difference between them? Worry not, this interactive parking map<\/a> breaks down all parking lots by permit type.<\/a> Make sure to read the fine print and actually remember to pay \u2014 take it from me.<\/p>\n Great, you\u2019ve finally found parking! Now you have to be productive. No more \u201cI\u2019ll do this at home\u201d \u2014 we both know you\u2019re not going to. With that three-hour lab, your weekly club meeting and the long trek to and from school, it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll feel the motivation to even open Canvas.\u00a0<\/p>\n Geisel Library might seem like the place to be, but you\u2019ll need a spot that\u2019s commuter friendly, a place with more amenities \u2014 an accessible restroom, a microwave to heat up last night\u2019s leftovers, a refrigerator to store your snacks and comfy study spots with enough outlets to charge your Apple ecosystem. Consider checking out one of the UCSD community centers<\/a>. You can also head over to Price Center, which houses a commuter lounge,<\/a> commuter fridge<\/a> and commuter lockers<\/a> \u2014 on top of plenty of study nooks and restaurants. Why not grab a Baja Blast before your afternoon lock-in?\u00a0I think we can agree that missing out on the \u201ccollege experience\u201d is a familiar worry for any commuter. While the rest of your peers are moving into their dorms and forming lifelong bonds with roommates, you feel stuck in an endless loop of traffic and social alienation \u2014 not to twist the knife.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, no matter if you live 20 minutes or two hours away from UCSD, don\u2019t let distance stop you from becoming more involved. Although your undergraduate experience might not look like the one in the movies, you still have plenty of opportunities to connect, learn and thrive. You belong on this campus and you\u2019re here for a reason! The right people won\u2019t care if you live in Pepper Canyon West or in your childhood home with your cat.\u00a0<\/p>\n It might be challenging to romanticize the commuter student experience, but try to think on the bright side this Fall Quarter. For starters, no stinky communal bathrooms shared between 16 people or food poisoning from mysterious dining hall chicken \u2014 that sounds like a win to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Congrats Triton commuters, you\u2019ve made it to college \u2014 except you live off campus and your classes are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[187741,187742,6205,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-478389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-commuter","tag-commuter-tips","tag-guide","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}