7 Quick Takes Friday (Take 5)

David and I are moving to North Carolina this summer!  Yes, I did just move to Indiana less than six months ago, and yes, that will mean moving twice within a year.  David’s advisor is leaving his university for one in North Carolina and advised him to follow her and continue his research there in order to guarantee that he’ll graduate with his Ph.D. next May.  Of course, it was quite a shock at first, however we made the decision quickly (he just found out on Monday) and we’ve already gotten used to the idea.  So for this week’s “7 Quick Takes Friday”, I will be listing three reasons we are sad to leave followed by four reasons we are excited to arrive in North Carolina (since we are going, I better put more pros than cons because I’m determined to make the absolute best of it).

1. We will miss David’s family.  We currently live in the same city as his aunt, uncle, and one of his cousins and his wife, and only live two hours away from his aunt, uncle, cousin, and her two kids in Chicago.  We are especially going to miss the kids, because we just adore them and we’ll miss them growing up.  We wouldn’t have been here more than a year or two longer, but we were really looking forward to the time we would have with them.

2. Moving is expensive and exhausting.  It was quite an ordeal to move all my furniture, wedding gifts, etc. to Indiana, now we have to move all that plus David’s furniture and the things we bought here thinking we would be in our apartment for at least two years.  I am not looking forward to repacking, although I still have some boxes up in our closet that I never unpacked because there wasn’t room in the kitchen for our pretty things (like martini glasses and crystal).

3. We are trying to have a baby.  If we get pregnant soon, the move will be during my pregnancy, which would make it more difficult.  I’m not a fan of having to switch doctor’s mid-pregnancy.  Also, I have a job here, but there is not guarantee that I will have a job there and three mouths to feed (and clothe) on David’s small graduate student stipend may be difficult.  We’ve talked about this and decided that these aren’t great enough reasons to postpone pregnancy, so we will just have to work on trusting God.  I’m not very good at trusting anyone, so this is difficult for me, but it provides me with opportunities to grow.

Now for the positives:

4. North Carolina is warm.  And supposedly very beautiful.   We are going there on blind faith, because we’ve never been there and won’t have the chance to visit before we had to make the decision, so we just went for it.

5. This will be my first experience living in a big city.  I’ve always thought I wouldn’t like to raise a family in a big city, so the best time to try it is now while we are young newlyweds.  And Raleigh is two hours from the beach (THE BEACH!) and close to “country living”, so it’s kind of like the best of both worlds.  Exciting.

6. David will have so many research and networking opportunities.  He wants to go into academia, which will most likely mean that he has to take a year post-doctoral position after he graduates.  The area we are moving to is a hot spot for his field, so he’ll have many opportunities to hobnob with professors and industries that can help him further his career.

7. We won’t be going alone.  Some of the others in David’s lab group are moving as well, including the couple with which we had Thanksgiving dinner.  I also have a friend from college that is getting her Ph.D. at the university where David will be doing his research and it will be fun to be able to see her. 

David also found that Raleigh was ranked #4 on the list of top 10 cities for young teachers, which means that I might have the chance to find my dream teaching job there.  I’m not sure if I should be excited about that or not, because, like I said previously, we are trying to get pregnant, which means that I probably wouldn’t be able to get a teaching job for the upcoming school year (no one is going to hire a new teacher who will go on maternity leave right away).  But I like the idea of having more opportunities (even if I can’t take advatage of them at the moment)!

Don’t forget to check out all the other great 7 Quick Takes at ConversionDiary.com!