For the past year, I’ve had a 7–14 mile commute, depending on which campus the class is at. And if things work out well, I’ll be having a 1–12 mile commute (depending on which campus) starting in October.
For me, the issue isn’t really about the length of the commute. It’s the ratio of time spent driving to time spent in class (or doing whatever).
For the first 2 years of college, I had a 35-mile commute (each way). For night classes (3 or 4 hours, once a week) that was fine. Or for 5-hour chunks of classes, that was fine. But if I had an hour of driving, followed by an hour-and-a-half class, followed by an hour of driving, that was unacceptable. What really made my blood boil was wasting 2 gallons of gas to get to the classroom door and see a yellow slip saying “Class cancelled.”
really though, from age 14 to 19, I had a shitty commute to everything, not just classes. The grocery store was a 20-minute drive, and if I wanted to go to any real civilization, it was at least 40 minutes.