Commuting, Working, and Still Trying to Feel Like a Student

My ASU experience has never looked like the ideal version people advertise. I commute, I work, and I spend a lot of time measuring every hour because there is not much room for error in my schedule. I used to think that meant community life just was not for people like me. I assumed that if I was not constantly on campus, living near friends, or free to attend everything, then I would always be slightly outside of the college experience. That assumption started affecting me more than I realized. I would come to campus, go to class, and leave. On the surface, I was being responsible. Underneath that, I was feeling disconnected. It was hard to build relationships when I was always moving to the next obligation. It was also hard to explain why I felt so drained, because nothing was “wrong” in a dramatic sense. I was just carrying school, work, financial stress, family expectations, and the background pressure of navigating campus as a Black student who did not always feel fully at ease. There is a particular kind of fatigue that comes from constantly switching roles. In one part of the day, I was trying to be the focused student. In another, I was the employee. In another, I was the person my family depended on to stay steady and keep going. Add the racial dynamics of the classroom and campus, and it felt like I was always adjusting but rarely exhaling. I started to understand that my exhaustion was not just about workload. It was about the weight of moving through multiple systems that all asked something from me. What helped was realizing that support did not have to mean changing my whole life overnight. I did not need to become the most visible person on campus to benefit from community. I just needed points of connection that reminded me I was not doing all of this in isolation. Once I started engaging more intentionally with Black student community and paying attention to the resources available to students, I stopped feeling like I had to choose between being responsible and being connected. That shift made me more honest with myself about what success should look like. Success was not pretending