By Yuko Iseya

The first year of my college life has already passed. I remember a lot of things I experienced, especially that I couldn't spend my free time effectively at first. Since it takes two and half hours to commute to school, my free time is limited. Therefore, it's hard for me to do many things. There must be many students like me in SU, so I'd like to express my present feelings and I'd like to enjoy college life with other students who commute.

I go to school from Chitose every day, and I have to leave home at 6:20 a.m. when I have a first period class. In the early morning I can't take an express train because there are only local trains at that time, so it takes two and half hours to go to school. Also, the time I have to go home is inconvenient. Because of the time of the last bus to my home in Chitose, I have to leave Sapporo before 9:00 p.m. at the latest. If I take the last bus, I get home at after 10:00 p.m. Thus, I've been forced to lead a life dictated by the clock.

If I slot the time for a part-time job, club activity and study into my daily schedule, I wouldn't have enough time for sleep. I racked my brain to figure out how I could make the most of every day. I thought about quitting my part-time job, but I couldn't because I didn't want to take any more allowance from my mother, although I depend on her to pay 30,000 yen for my monthly commuter passes. I thought if I didn't belong to a club, I could get a little free time. However, I wanted to belong to a club while I was a student, and so I decided to join the Youth Forum News club which makes an English and Russian newspaper. Of course, I was bent on doing my studies, too. My college life finally started from April.

Classes really began and I gradually got to know my classmates and the feel of the campus in April and May. I didn't feel college life is too hard at that time. However, as I began to get accustomed to my school life pretty well, in June my life changed completely. My club activity began in earnest. Moreover, I began to feel it was hard for me to keep up with classes without preparation. I cut my time for sleep to do my homework and repeated this again and again until I fell ill and missed classes a few times. I was irritated because everything was not going well. While commuting on a packed train every day I couldn't even read a book, and it seemed like a waste of time. However, no matter how much I disliked it, the situation never changed, and I was as pressed for time as ever.

In June I decided to do two things; one would be to quit my part-time job during the semester and resume it during the long holidays in order to make more time, and the other would be to get to the platform earlier and take seat so that I could read a textbook or work on the article for YFN. On a less crowded train I could read and do my homework. Those 50 minutes, which used to be wasted, now became effective. It is a very useful amount of time when I use it like this.

I learned a way to use time from my experiences, and I realized that even though I have almost no time, it is possible to change things and use the time I have more efficiently, and that gave me confidence to try some new things. I have come to feel that this lifestyle seems to be congenial to me somehow. Though I've had a hard time, I have been hustling everyday without complaint, and now I'm writing an article for YFN for the third time. My hard schedule wonﾕt change for the next three years, but I'll do my best and make my school life as full as possible.