Parking and walking, but at least the weather is nice...
So I didn't get a campus parking permit (also known as a campus parking hunting license) this quarter. At the guy at the parking office told me, haughtily, "You only have 35 credits, that's about as much as a Freshman at the end of winter quarter." Let's leave aside that those 35 credits are plenty for me to graduate with my MS, right? Now I've had fewer credits than that, and gotten a permit, so what changed, I asked? Nothing at ALL, they said. Nothing. You just flat out don't have enough credits. I remain skeptical that their main reason for this, "we opened permit applications a week earlier" is a sufficient explanation, since I went from getting that permit, to #721 on the waiting list.
So my only real parking options are:
1. Pay $10/DAY to park where I've been parking for the last years
2. Get a permit to a lot a few miles off campus, buy bus permit (grad students don't get one with enrollment if you aren't taking classes), and just deal with the extra hour this would add to my already 3 hour commute.
I found a bit of another option:
3. Park about a mile off campus, and walk.
This is fine now when the weather is nice, so it's what I'm doing. Since I'd always parked as far away as I could and taken a circuitous route to the biology dept to maximize the number of steps I was getting, the nice thing about this is that between that extra mile or so each way and my campus inefficient walk, I get 10000 steps before I'm back at the car
That said, when the weather turns crappy I'm not going to be as happy. That's when I'm guessing those $10 won't look as outrageous, especially only once a week, since I've been going on on Saturday, which has the triple benefit of quiet and solitude, not paying for parking, and being able to bring Perry home with me after his Saturday morning practice.
So my only real parking options are:
1. Pay $10/DAY to park where I've been parking for the last years
2. Get a permit to a lot a few miles off campus, buy bus permit (grad students don't get one with enrollment if you aren't taking classes), and just deal with the extra hour this would add to my already 3 hour commute.
I found a bit of another option:
3. Park about a mile off campus, and walk.
This is fine now when the weather is nice, so it's what I'm doing. Since I'd always parked as far away as I could and taken a circuitous route to the biology dept to maximize the number of steps I was getting, the nice thing about this is that between that extra mile or so each way and my campus inefficient walk, I get 10000 steps before I'm back at the car
That said, when the weather turns crappy I'm not going to be as happy. That's when I'm guessing those $10 won't look as outrageous, especially only once a week, since I've been going on on Saturday, which has the triple benefit of quiet and solitude, not paying for parking, and being able to bring Perry home with me after his Saturday morning practice.