"We gotta stand a little closer."

I made a little stop motion to show the monotonous drive from Advance to Winston-Salem I made every day last year.

Last year was my first year at UNCSA. Since I lived with in the 25 mile radius I decided I would commute to school. It was nice having my car and my freedom to come and go as I pleased unlike those to live at school, but at the same time it was hard to make time to come and work on things in the studio on the weekends and a lot of my artwork I found myself doing at home. Because I wasn’t at school as much as everyone else, I didn’t make as many friends as I would of hoped to. I also found that commuting became an excuse to do things I didn’t really want to do and I wasn’t very involved in school events. To say the least, being a commuter decreased my social capital.

This year however I live at school. I have made a lot more friends, talked to people who I never talked to last year, and have participated in a lot more of the events going on at school. Also a lot more time and energy has gone into my artwork because I can now walk to the studios. Although at first I was dreading moving in, I know realize it has only brought me positive things and has definitely increased my social capital.

I decided to calculate a rough estimate of the time I spent commuting per week last year and here are the results:

FIVE HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES per week!

I have now gained at the least five more hours and twenty more minutes on top of that to work, rest, and enjoy my time here.

Not only do I have more time, I also am helping out the environment by not driving back and forth so much.