Split between School, Home, Work, and More

This chapter takes up the issue of how and where commuter students, students who do not have access to peer support through living on campus, locate their sense of campus belonging. When students lack a “place” on campus, they are more likely to adopt a functional (“I go to school”) identity rather than an all-encompassing (“I am a student”) identity. After all, the challenge of commuting is often much more than the physical distance between home and school. The chapter shows how this commuter status is both an identification and an identity. This is seen through the experiences of students who range in their ability to successfully transition as commuting students—from experiencing their residential status as simply a factor of their reality to experiencing it as the central obstacle to fully becoming a college student.