I moved...

The last few months have been a little stressful.  During the week I was putting in 12-16 hour days and on the weekends I was flying to my new lab. Or I would work on the weekend so I could take some time during the week to do a recruiting event, meet with a student, talk to a collaborator, etc. It's been an insane few months capped by eventually moving my life to my new city. My spouse told me to just hand off tasks and be done, but my thought is leaving a good taste will only increase the possibility of my old company wanting to fund my new research. In the past months I've had a ton of post ideas I've written down and I do plan to post them soon since life is beginning to calm ever so slightly. There's this quote used in House of Cards about the wind blowing the hardest the closer to the top you climb. I feel like I summited. Left with my name not sullied or damaged. But it's kind of a false summit (hikers out there know what I'm talking about) because I see this new mountain and at the top the flag looks like it says "tenure" but my visibility in these goggles is pretty bad.  

I plan to have two more posts related to what I'll miss about industry and look forward to in academics and start up a new blog. I'll keep my name: 1. Because I'm lazy and 2. Because my industry experience has shapes me more than anything I've done so far. Students are already lining up asking me everything they can about successful in a medical engineering field and they all talk about how they're so excited to have someone that's "made things inside of people".  

This move has been absolutely crazy: finding a renter (we don't want to sell yet), packing all of our crap, hiring new people in my old group, planning out budgets, transitioning knowledge and planning to the new guard, buying a house, moving everything, and a ton of smaller things that add up.  And there are plenty of stories to tell. You'll be seeing a few last posts and I'll talk about my new digs in the upcoming week!

The new house

Happy New Year!

As soon as I accepted an offer from the new school I started looking at houses and talking with people.  I wanted to find a good neighborhood: close to stuff but quiet.  It took my 9 months to find my current dwelling, so I figured it would take me longer to find my new one.  Turns out it’s waaaaaaaaaay cheaper to live in my new city, so I found it in 3 months and about 5 visits between myself and my spouse.

Finding my current place was a long process because I live one of many markets that’s expensive and hot (not unlike me).  I wanted something very specific and the architecture of the area combined with cost and safety made it tough to find exactly what I desired.  Every time I found exactly what I wanted, someone scooped me.  On my first visit to my new city I found three houses and checked them all out.  None of these were really what I wanted.  Then my spouse went out and looked at about 10 over a few days.  I came back out to look at the top three and we had found the one we wanted.  We put in an offer about 5% below asking and got it. I especially like it because it’s almost turn-key.  So are renting it out for this semester and next, then in May we’re starting to rip parts out the house and replace.  Plans are that it should be ready by the end of the semester just in time for us to move in.

I have to say that we’re a little worried about renting it out to students but that’s the advantage of ripping the house apart when the semester is done…it almost doesn’t matter what they do.  On top of this the neighbors will be thanking the Lord when we move in because we would be replacing the rowdy college kids.  It’s kind of like giving someone REALLY bad news before giving them kind-of bad news.

I’m really pumped about the move (though we haven’t yet put our current place on the market) as I can already see having friends over, how I want it arranged, and having students over a couple times a semester for lab celebrations.  On that note: my advisor would have the occasional get-together at his place, but I noticed other advisors would just take their students out.  In our lab the get-togethers weren’t related to a lab event like when someone finished their PhD.  It was just a random Spring or Winter one.  I’m fine with that, though I plan on celebrating their achievements.  Unless they don’t want that.  What if they would prefer not to celebrate with their boss?  What if they wreck up my house because they actually secretly hate me?  Actually, I have no idea what I’ll do.  It’s too bad there isn’t an “Advising for dummies”...kind of like those parenting books.