Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

The Long Commute

It takes about two to three hours to commute from my home to where I intern everyday. Knowing that I’m a horrible driver, I decided to use the train to commute to work. You would think that the distance between L.A. and Orange County isn’t that far, but you always have to expect the worst with the busy traffic in L.A. I live more towards the suburban area, so it takes around 40 minutes to get to the station in the city by train. Then, it takes another hour and thirty minutes to two hours on the bus to arrive in Santa Monica. My internship starts at 10:00 AM but I have to wake up at 6:00 AM to get ready on time to board the train. During the first couple of days, everything was new to me especially because I was so unfamiliar with the city. Even though I had been living in California for years, I lived in the suburbs of Orange County and I never really ventured through the busy streets of Los Angeles. Even when I was in college, I wasn’t really fond of the city life because Babson was tucked away inside the quiet neighborhood of Wellesley. My family couldn’t understand why I would go through so much trouble when I could just take the car, but like my new internship, this was a new experience and adventure that I wanted to embrace.

I never expected city life to be so different from life in the suburbs. The character and urgency of the people is a lot more visible in the city. Wherever you look, you can find diverse groups of people with different flavors and spices that bring life to the streets. As the days passed, I began to see familiar faces on my way to work. Many of them were people, like me, who lived in the suburbs but had work in the city. What first started as cordial “hello’s” turned into friendships that I look forward to seeing as I travel to work. The more I talked to my new friends, the more I learned about life as a working person in the city. A lot of them were working for businesses and companies in various industries as accountants or marketing team members. I even had a chance to represent Babson as I shared stories of my experiences of starting a business with my classmates in FME. The stories of challenges and benefits that they experienced during their work life added fresh new perspective on working in the city. What I admired most about some of the new friends I made, was that many of them were not just employees, but also moms and dads that were able to juggle their personal and professional responsibilities. Listening to their stories allowed me to discover new possible career opportunities and think about the type of working environment that I want to be involved with in the future.

As an entrepreneur, my commute to work is the perfect opportunity for me to learn and develop myself. Being immersed inside a surrounding with so many different people and culture gives me more material to see and soak in. Most importantly, I am able to create new bonds and network with a diverse group of people that I constantly learn and grow from. As they share their stories with me, their experiences also become part of my experience as an intern. My commute to work has been a vital part of my internship adventure that I have learned most from to propel myself forward as an entrepreneur.