Jason Gibson ‘19 begins each school day before the sun rises, waking up to take a shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast in time for his mother to drive him the 46 miles from their home in Severna Park, Md., just northwest of Annapolis, to Sidwell in time for his 8 a.m. class.
Gibson’s commute, the longest by distance of any current Upper School student, goes through some of the most traffic-clogged roads in the Baltimore-Washington region, and takes an hour and a half in each direction assuming no road work or accidents are causing unusual delays.
“The only good part is that I get to sleep during the car ride,” Gibson said. But “it's hard to get a ride down to D.C. on the weekends when I want to hang out with my friends.”
Gibson has the longest commute to Sidwell by distance, but a number of other students also have lengthy, complicated trips to and from school.
Rama Somborac ‘19, who lives in Bowie, Md., said her 29-mile, hour-and-a-quarter commute to school has impacted her social life and limited her ability to participate in after-school activities.
“The distance makes participating in extracurriculars harder and made me reconsider some of my extracurriculars,” Somborac said.
“I can never make last minute plans because my parents are the ones that have to pick me up, and since I live far from everyone else, they don’t want to keep driving around if I change my mind about something,” she said.
Somborac leaves her house at 6:15 a.m. and drops her brother off at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Northeast Washington before arriving at Sidwell. She usually gets home around 5:30 p.m., and sometimes arrives later if traffic is especially bad.
Gibson and Somborac said that with their parents doing the driving, they can use their long car rides to do homework and catch up on sleep, but they agreed that the commute can be burdensome.
Gibson, a varsity basketball player, said when he can’t finish his homework before getting home “sometimes I'll have to stay up late, depending on when I get home.” During basketball season, he often doesn’t get home until 9:30 or 10 p.m.
Adrian Vera ‘18, who lives in Woodbridge, Va., gets a ride from his parents each morning to the Pentagon City Metro station, where he takes a Yellow Line train to Gallery Place, transfers to the Red Line, exits at Tenleytown, and walks or takes a bus the last half mile to Sidwell.
“Having a long commute doesn’t really affect my homework ability and study time,” Vera said. “I usually am able to do my homework and study a little bit before . . . [leaving] school. I usually do my homework during school and study a little bit during school as well so that it saves me time so that when I get home my homework is done and . . . I can just study.”
Vera’s commute usually takes about an hour each way, but he said that during a snowstorm in the winter of 2016, the Metrorail system was in such disarray that it took him several hours to get home.
Associate Head of School Ellis Turner acknowledged the geographic diversity of the Upper School, but did not think long commutes have an adverse effect on students.
"We have students who commute from Potomac, Northern Virginia, Baltimore and PG County,” Turner said. “The Upper School administration has not observed a correlation between students with long commutes and academic challenges.”
Students with long commutes say the hours they spend traveling back and forth are worth it, despite relentless gridlock, severe weather, early mornings, and late nights.
“The commute didn't matter because of how good of a school it is,” said Gibson.
Somborac agreed: “It’s the best school in the region. That makes it worth it.”
Vera said he and his family did not consider the commute in making a decision about where he would go to school.
“My commute didn’t play a big factor into my decision of coming to Sidwell. As I was applying, I didn’t really look at what my commute would be like. It was only after I was accepted that I began to figure it out.”
By Kelly Anderson, Horizon News Editor, October 2017
Gibson’s commute, the longest by distance of any current Upper School student, goes through some of the most traffic-clogged roads in the Baltimore-Washington region, and takes an hour and a half in each direction assuming no road work or accidents are causing unusual delays.
“The only good part is that I get to sleep during the car ride,” Gibson said. But “it's hard to get a ride down to D.C. on the weekends when I want to hang out with my friends.”
Gibson has the longest commute to Sidwell by distance, but a number of other students also have lengthy, complicated trips to and from school.
Rama Somborac ‘19, who lives in Bowie, Md., said her 29-mile, hour-and-a-quarter commute to school has impacted her social life and limited her ability to participate in after-school activities.
“The distance makes participating in extracurriculars harder and made me reconsider some of my extracurriculars,” Somborac said.
“I can never make last minute plans because my parents are the ones that have to pick me up, and since I live far from everyone else, they don’t want to keep driving around if I change my mind about something,” she said.
Somborac leaves her house at 6:15 a.m. and drops her brother off at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Northeast Washington before arriving at Sidwell. She usually gets home around 5:30 p.m., and sometimes arrives later if traffic is especially bad.
Gibson and Somborac said that with their parents doing the driving, they can use their long car rides to do homework and catch up on sleep, but they agreed that the commute can be burdensome.
Gibson, a varsity basketball player, said when he can’t finish his homework before getting home “sometimes I'll have to stay up late, depending on when I get home.” During basketball season, he often doesn’t get home until 9:30 or 10 p.m.
Adrian Vera ‘18, who lives in Woodbridge, Va., gets a ride from his parents each morning to the Pentagon City Metro station, where he takes a Yellow Line train to Gallery Place, transfers to the Red Line, exits at Tenleytown, and walks or takes a bus the last half mile to Sidwell.
“Having a long commute doesn’t really affect my homework ability and study time,” Vera said. “I usually am able to do my homework and study a little bit before . . . [leaving] school. I usually do my homework during school and study a little bit during school as well so that it saves me time so that when I get home my homework is done and . . . I can just study.”
Vera’s commute usually takes about an hour each way, but he said that during a snowstorm in the winter of 2016, the Metrorail system was in such disarray that it took him several hours to get home.
Associate Head of School Ellis Turner acknowledged the geographic diversity of the Upper School, but did not think long commutes have an adverse effect on students.
"We have students who commute from Potomac, Northern Virginia, Baltimore and PG County,” Turner said. “The Upper School administration has not observed a correlation between students with long commutes and academic challenges.”
Students with long commutes say the hours they spend traveling back and forth are worth it, despite relentless gridlock, severe weather, early mornings, and late nights.
“The commute didn't matter because of how good of a school it is,” said Gibson.
Somborac agreed: “It’s the best school in the region. That makes it worth it.”
Vera said he and his family did not consider the commute in making a decision about where he would go to school.
“My commute didn’t play a big factor into my decision of coming to Sidwell. As I was applying, I didn’t really look at what my commute would be like. It was only after I was accepted that I began to figure it out.”
By Kelly Anderson, Horizon News Editor, October 2017
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