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If my family hadn’t moved to Staten Island when I was 15 years old, I may have never gotten my driver’s license. Back when we lived in Brooklyn, I had no reason to learn to drive. Everything was either within walking distance or near public transportation. It was quite a shock, then, to move to a remote neighborhood on the lower end of Staten Island. The closest store is about 1.5 miles away from my house. There are a couple of buses nearby and a train station 1.5 miles away… but they’re all really poor forms of transportation. It takes way too long to get around. Therefore, getting my license was imperative. In fact, I spent my 16th birthday at the DMV so I could get my learner’s permit.

Getting my permit was the first step. The second step in my plan was to learn to drive. I bugged my dad for months to go driving with me. You know what, though? All that bugging paid off because, by the time my 17th birthday rolled around, I had my license. (That was also partly due to my taking a Driver’s Ed course that allowed me to get my license a year earlier than normally allowed in New York.)

The third step? Getting a car. I bugged my parents for that, too. But that paid off, too! During my senior year of high school, I drove a 2000 Mercury Cougar. I loved that car. It was small, it was sporty… it was mine! I drove it to my 3 (!) classes that year, I drove it to work, I drove it back to school for Yearbook, I drove it everywhere. I only had it for two years, though, before my parents sold it. It made sense — my parents had two cars and only ever had one out at a time. So the idea was that my sister and I would share the other car. However, it turned out that my sister got a little greedy with it and I can never use the car without asking her in advance if I can use it. However, this wasn’t a big deal since Alex got a car and I began commuting to school with my parents. It was just a nuisance that I had to deal with every once in a while.

Next year, though, I’m going to need my own car. I’ll continue living on Staten Island, NY, but I’ll be going to Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ, while working at the Brooklyn College Library in Brooklyn, NY. (Speaking of which: I may be hired as an Adjunct Reference Librarian in the fall. I’ll know more about this later in the summer.) So that’ll be a lot of driving.

Needless to say, I’m looking to get a fuel-efficient vehicle for my driving needs. This is why I’m considering getting a Toyota Prius. The numbers just add up: it gets an average of 45 MPG for about $200/mo for a 36-month lease. Getting a Honda Civic Hybrid — which also gets about 45 MPG — will cost anywhere from $80 to $130 more per month for the same 36-month lease. (For some reason, Hondas are very expensive to lease.) So my current plan of action is to save up as much money as I can from my current gig at the Brooklyn College Library so I can put down a decent down payment on a Prius so I can pay less per month. I don’t have too many other expenses (I don’t pay rent, I don’t pay for groceries, I don’t pay for my cellphone service…) so it shouldn’t be too hard.

I will have to figure out how to pay for graduate school, though. By the time I get my MLIS, I will have spent over $30,000 on school-related expenses. I’m going to have to take out a loan, obviously. However, I know nothing about these things. Anyone have any suggestions?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.