Commuting to NU can be quite the hassle. The drive is almost enough to push a man to the brink of madness. With bumper-to-bumper traffic jams and endless stretches of idling in lines that measure movement in car-lengths, the daily commute can sometimes resemble a parking lot.

Because it is.

I spent almost 30 minutes snaking through the Columbus lot one morning last week, searching for a spot to drop anchor.

Unfortunately for me, or anyone who wanted to get to class on time without arriving hours in advance to park, there was not a spot to be found. Nothing.

Undeterred, I continued on in my search. I attempted to out-think the other vultures looking to get to class on time. I patiently waited for one young lady to finish clearing the snow off her car, deducing that her spot would soon be vacated. The woman dusted off her final window, tossed her brush in the backseat, and walked away. There was no spot to be had here.

Then it was time to spiral up five levels of the garage, circle down, and do a few more laps around the surface lot before deciding to play a game of “make your own spot.”

Anyone with a parking pass knows the rules to this game. Find an area of the surface lot that vaguely looks as if it could be a parking spot, and settle there. Fire lanes, bus lanes, the ends of existing parking corridors, spots reserved for Northeastern faculty, whatever. Just make it look like an actual parking spot, and no one’s the wiser.

It’s a shame that it has come to this. I play the game every day. It’s not the commuters’ fault. They all have parking passes, and they all paid a large sum of money for that privilege. But, sometimes, you’d like to think that such an amount of money would guarantee you a place to put your automobile once you arrive on campus.

It’s also perplexing when considering the fact that Northeastern had previously been exclusively a commuter school.

All the on-campus readers, whose idea of a commute is a three-minute walk from Stetson East to Shillman Hall, probably won’t give a second thought to any of this. But for anyone who has a blue decal stuck to their back window, don’t despair: you’re not alone. And, hey, that guy with the orange backpack looks like he’s ready to leave. Could be another spot opening up.

— Mike Grimala is a senior journalism major.