I decided to become a commuter student.

Now if I grew up in the Lansing or Okemos area this hardly would qualify as a big deal, but I live in Farmington Hills, approximately 70 miles from campus, making it nearly a three-hour commute simply to travel to and from school each day.

For me, this purely was a financial decision.

Spending around $1,500 a semester on gas paled in comparison to having to dole out more than $6,000 for an apartment, Internet, electricity and food.

My goal has been to go to law school and with average law school tuition costing more than $40,000 a year, I need to save money in any way I can.

Yet a decision that seemed to make a lot of economic sense to me has been met with surprising resistance.

Family members tell me I am missing out on the college experience by living at home.

Friends are sometimes upset when I come to a party and am not able to drink because I have to drive home at the end of the night.

Teachers aren’t thrilled with me occasionally arriving to class five minutes late, and I have had to miss work twice because of bad weather.

I just recently have begun to feel the physical fatigue of having to spend what will amount to approximately 550 hours driving more than 25,000 miles through the fall and spring semesters.

Those 550 hours amount to almost 23 days of constant driving, and it’s amazing the wear that simply sitting and pushing a pedal can have.

That’s why after this semester mercifully ends; I will be looking at apartments for next year.

I’ve realized that with a job to help offset the monetary cost, living on campus just makes more sense.

When I think about all the time that I’ve spent in the car instead of doing more productive things like watching TV, sleeping and studying from time to time, I realize there’s so much more I could be doing.

I’ve missed important things like Lady Gaga hatching from an egg, Lindsay Lohan’s most recent mug shot and Kourtney Kardashian personally taking both New York and Miami.

I’ve made sure not to miss papers, exams and lunch (a person has to have their priorities), but I’ve got to believe there’s more to college life.

MSU wasn’t built to be a commuter school, and trying to do two years of this probably would kill me.

Commuting has been hard but there are a lot of things that I’ve been able to take away from it.

I’ve saved money while going to a great school and still experienced the social aspects of college through my job and activities across campus.

I’m confident that this was, without a doubt, the very best way for me to attend school this year.

However, you might need to ask me again in nine weeks.

Josh Mansour is a State News staff writer. To reach him, e-mail him at mansou13@msu.edu