the upside of commuting?

A cousin of mine who lives in New York City spends four hours a day commuting to and from work: a drive to catch the ferry followed by the subway. Four hours a day is a lot of time -- four hours spent going to and fro on top of an eight to ten hour workday. That's twelve to fourteen hours a day dedicated solely to WORK. I don't envy him at all, not one bit... except... maybe... the one good thing that would come from commuting would be the plethora of quality reading and/or music listening time. You are forced to sit there for however many hours a day where the only practical thing you could possibly do is either read or listen to music and/or (if one could afford an iPod unlike myself) PODCASTS. The latter is another cool discovery I stumbled upon while perusing anatomy websites for my research project. More specifically, medicine-related podcasts! It's amazing what's out there. Imagine all the passive learning you could do that way.

Or I could just spend that time actively studying... but that would require, you know, action.