Seeing Campus from a New Angle
I started taking the bus again.
I’ve only really ever driven to work since I moved to work Michigan State University in 2018. Before then, I always walked and/or took public transportation.
In the fall semester 2021 I started going to campus 2-3 times per week again. I really like being back on campus, and I decided to take the bus again. It’s been more of an experiment, more of a reconnection with what I used to do, than out of necessity.
I didn’t expect to like it so much. It’s definitely not as convenient in some respects: there’s the lack of how much I can transport, the weather, the reliance on schedules. But there are some clear benefits: the filling of my Apple Watch rings, the time I get to look at my iPhone without feeling guilty, the fact that someone else is doing the driving. It’s also better for the environment and definitely cheaper (it’s $1 each way…). And the app is really great, it tells me when to start walking to the stop, where the bus is, and how crowded it is.
But most of all, what I like most is regaining something lost in the pandemic – connection. I am part of an ecosystem rather than cocooned off. I see fellow faculty, I see students, I see community members. Ridership is actually down, and usually there are only a handful of people. It’s especially empty when I leave a bit later in the morning, after 9. I think that connection is so important, and it is more important than comforts. (Shockingly, my Apple Watch tells me that I burn so many more calories this way.) I am seeing a different areas of campus, and seeing the university through a different lens. I can look out of the window without having to concentrate on steering a vehicle myself. As someone who researches educational spaces and places, it’s a wonderful thing.
The connection is also a temporal one: it connects me to my former self, riding the bus to my first teaching job in Regensburg, Germany, or to the library at Penn State, writing my dissertation almost 2 decades ago.
It’s easy to do once or twice a week. If I go back every day (who knows what the future in academia will be like), I might start looking at all these shiny, tempting new electric cars. But for now, I’m happy riding the bus.
