Personal Finance for PhDs

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Career Transitions

This PhD Couple Combined a Cross-Country Move with a Vacation

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In this episode, Emily tells the story of her 2015 cross-country move from Durham, NC to Seattle, WA for her husband Kyle’s first post-PhD Real Job. Emily breaks down their decision-making around how to move and secure their housing in Seattle. Ultimately, they chose a pod-based moving company and a cross-country road trip/vacation, and Emily shares the exact amount of money they spent on each component of the move and how the logistics worked. Emily concludes with what she wishes she would have done differently. For more discussions on how to financially navigate a move and starting a new position, see pfforphds.com/next.

Further reading:

Links Mentioned in the Episode

cross-country move vacation

Background

In the summer of 2015, Emily and her husband Kyle were one year out from their PhD defenses. Kyle had been postdocing in his PhD advisor’s lab, and Emily had been doing various jobs (Personal Finance for PhDs, freelance editing, and a science policy fellowship).

In May 2015, Kyle applied for several positions, and ultimately was offered a postdoc and an industry job. He accepted the industry position in Seattle, Washington, at the end of May, and set his start date for the beginning of August.

Finding Housing in Seattle

Emily and Kyle’s first step was to research the rental market in Seattle. They were accustomed to the durham housing market, in which you arranged housing several weeks or a couple months in advance of your desired move-in date. However, in Seattle, rentals are typically “available immediately” or only a few days out. Therefore, searching for housing in June for an end-of-July move-in was not the proper timing. However, they used this research to familiarize themselves with the market.

They decided to limit their housing search to 1.5 miles from Kyle’s new work. This was not in downtown Seattle, so the rents were not as exorbitant as it is in other parts of the city. At that time, the rental market in Seattle was very hot, so there was a lot of competition for rentals.

They knew in June that they couldn’t conduct their final housing search right then, but rather got an idea of the range of prices they could expect to pay. Their official housing search would have to wait until after they had moved to Seattle and were ready to take possession of a rental a few days in advance of Kyle’s job’s start date.

Planning the Cross-Country Move

Emily and Kyle’s second step was to start planning their cross-country move: how to get themselves, their car, and their stuff from Durham to Seattle.

There were two main constraints on moving process:

  • As they didn’t yet have housing secured, they had no address to which to deliver their stuff. They had to consider how fast their stuff would move cross-country.
  • They had a relocation budget of $5,000 from Kyle’s new job, which Kyle had ‘accidentally’ negotiated for.

Further reading: The Reluctant Negotiator

Emily and Kyle decided to keep the direct moving expenses within that $5,000 budget so they wouldn’t have to dip into their own money.

Upon starting to research their cross-country move, they found three broad categories of moving styles:

  • Full-service moving: Professional movers load your boxed stuff into a truck, drive the truck to your new home, and unload the stuff. You can additionally pay for packing/unpacking services.
  • DIY moving: You do the entire move yourself. You box and load your things into a rented truck, drive it to your destination, unload it all, and return the truck.
  • Pod-based moving: A pod (portable storage unit) is delivered to your old residence. You pack it up, the company moves it to your destination, and you unpack it. Additional storage time at the destination is easily available. This is at an intermediate price point between full-service and DIY moving.

Emily and Kyle ruled out full-service moving because it cost more than their entire budget and they didn’t have an address to which the boxes would be delivered. DIY moving is the least expensive way to move a lot of stuff but it wasn’t attractive to Emily and Kyle for this particular move. They didn’t want to drive an unfamiliar rented truck and be responsible for their stuff during their entire cross-country drive and throughout their housing search. It seemed a bit too stressful.

Pod-based moving seemed to be a happy medium for Emily and Kyle. The option to store their stuff in Seattle until they concluded their housing search was very attractive. They paired the pod-based moving with driving their own car cross-country. Instead of taking only a few days to drive cross-country, they decided to make the trip into a vacation as well. This slower pace worked well with pod-based moving.

Further reading: Moving Cross-Country with a Pod

Emily and Kyle secured seven quotes for various companies that did pod-based moving. PODS, the most well-known brand, was the most expensive. The lowest quote was from Door-to-Door, and the second-lowest quote was from UPack. They looked most carefully at Door-to-Door and UPack.

The size of the pod became important. The PODS pods were about the size of a parking space, whereas the Door-to-Door and UPack pods were about the size of half a parking space. For Emily and Kyle’s two-bedroom townhouse, PODS recommended using one pod, whereas Door-to-Door and UPack recommended using one pod. Using smaller pods was attractive because Emily and Kyle suspected they might be able to squeeze all their stuff into one pod only. As UPack allowed them to pack their own pod (Door-to-Door did not), they ultimately chose to move with UPack. UPack’s quote for moving two pods cross-country was $3,708.

Emily and Kyle sold and gave away some of their stuff. They sourced moving boxes mostly for free, but had to buy some packing materials as well. Emily’s parents came to town to help them pack, which they did in about a day and loaded their boxes into the two pods. But after getting everything out of the house, they decided to repack everything into one pod, with the remainder going into their car. Dropping down to using only one pod reduced the price to $2,472.

Some other direct moving costs were $155 for one month of storage of the pod in Seattle, $232 for a street permit for the pod to be delivered to the public street.

The total direct moving-related expenses that they asked to be reimbursed from Kyle’s employer was $3,052.39.

Cross-Country Vacation

Emily and Kyle decided to turn their cross-country road trip into a vacation, which was a strategy they had used many times for obligation travel during grad school. It was a much-needed break for rest and relaxation as they had not taken a vacation with just the two of them since their honeymoon five years earlier. They were also hopeful that they would have a baby in the near future, so this trip felt like a last chance at a vacation without other people for a long time.

They decided to arrive in Seattle about a week before Kyle’s job’s start date to give them time to conduct the housing search.

While Emily and Kyle typically planned their travel thoroughly, in this case they prioritized planning their move over planning their cross-country trip, so they basically winged it across the country. All they knew when they left Durham was where they were staying that night, some other friends to visit along the way, that the whole trip should take about 1.5 weeks, and some national parks they would like to see.

The general pattern for the trip was that each morning they would arrange for lodging for that night in the city they expected to drive to that day. They tried to alternate long days of driving with days of staying in one place and doing an activity. This fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants trip was rather uncomfortable for Emily and Kyle!

One unexpected challenge to the trip was that Kyle’s phone died on the first day. They relied only on Emily’s phone for the entire trip. Emily’s phone was and is with Republic Wireless. Once they got a little ways west of the Mississippi River, they didn’t have much phone service outside of major cities. They didn’t even have a paper map with them! So every morning when they booked their lodging, they also wrote out their driving directions for the day because they couldn’t rely on having cell service. Emily does not recommend any of this, but they got through it and it was still fun!

Emily and Kyle’s cross-country road trip included:

  • Visiting and staying 1 night with extended family
  • Visiting and staying 1 night with friends from grad school
  • Dinner with a friend
  • A day at Six Flags with Fast Passes
  • An outdoor festival and fish fry
  • Badlands National Park
  • Mount Rushmore
  • Yellowstone National Park (two full days parts of two days)
  • Grand Teton National Park

Further reading:

Another snafu that caused some overspending had to do with the last-minute travel booking and lack of cell service. They booked a night at the Bear Lodge Motel through Priceline and wrote out their directions to that address. While searching for the address, they saw a sign for Bear Lodge and went there. They didn’t have the booking, so they had to rebook. They realized upon getting into the cabin, they realized they were at the wrong location. They were at the Bear Lodge Mountain Resort, which was about one mile away from the Bear Lodge Motel on the same road. They ended up paying for both hotels that night, which was about $100 wasted. Make sure you go to the right address!

The total cost of the cross-country trip was $2,317.97. Emily and Kyle asked for $1,339.71 to be reimbursed by Kyle’s employer because it was direct moving expenses. The remaining vacation-related expenses were $978.26.

Finding Housing in Seattle

Emily and Kyle arranged to stay with two sets of friends in Seattle to give them about a week to conduct their housing search.

They were ideally searching for a 2BR 1BA apartment in an older building with no amenities as it is fairly expensive to live in Seattle and they were determined to keep their housing cost down.

Further reading: Apartment Search in Seattle

They only viewed three places before they found what they were looking for. The apartment they chose was only 0.2 miles from Kyle’s work. Within just a few minutes of entering this apartment they decided to apply for it, and they had to race another couple to submit their applications and $500 to skip to the front of the application line (which would ultimately go toward the security deposit).

Another challenge to obtaining housing in Seattle was that Emily and Kyle needed to provide their up-front rent and security deposit as a cashier’s check or money order. Because they bank with Ally, they had to find places to provide the needed money orders, which took a couple days.

Emily and Kyle’s total costs to get into their apartment were:

  • $302.48 in one-time fees for applications, processing, and money orders
  • $48 for July 31 rent and water/sewer/garbage
  • $1,495 for August rent and water/sewer/garbage
  • $1,375 for security deposit
  • total: $3,220.48

In addition, Emily and Kyle had already paid a full month’s rent in Durham, and they had not yet received their expected reimbursement for their unused rent.

Another unexpected cost to moving is eating out due to your limited time and lack of access to a full kitchen. Additionally, you can expect to spend more on groceries in your first month following your move as you stock your fridge and pantry.

What Would Emily Do Differently?

Emily hopes you learned from this story and its implicit advice.

If she had a do-over, Emily would have done a few things differently:

  • Spend more time planning the cross-country trip itself to keep costs lower.
  • Get rid of more stuff! They didn’t even unpack some boxes for a year and didn’t even notice that we were missing their contents.
  • Consider their longer-term needs for our housing in Seattle. Their apartment does not have a dishwasher or washing machine and dryer! This was fine before they had kids, but is now a strain with two children.

Emily is focusing a lot of her material on moving and starting a new job this summer, which you can find at pfforphds.com/next. She is offering webinars and coaching on this topic. A move and job transition is the perfect time to set yourself up for financial success!

How to Plan and Prepare for a Frugal Long-Distance Move

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“Don’t do your PhD at the same university you went to for your bachelor’s, and don’t postdoc at the same university you got your PhD from. You need to demonstrate success in multiple environments.” I heard this advice many times during my PhD training, and this is the path I followed: I did my undergrad in California, my postbac in Maryland, my PhD in North Carolina, a fellowship in DC, and now I live in Washington (for my husband’s first post-PhD Real Job). While there are certainly some PhDs who choose to stay in one certain city or region, the norm is to move a couple times or many times, even internationally. All this moving takes significant time and money to execute, especially once you start collecting possessions you actually want to retain. This article outlines how you can plan and prepare for a frugal long-distance move so that you minimize the cost to you in money, time, and stress.

frugal long-distance move

Further reading:

How Much Will Your Move Cost?

The price of a move runs the gamut from quite inexpensive at a few hundred dollars to quite expensive at several thousand or even on the order of $10,000 once all costs are accounted for. The main factors are:

  • the distance,
  • how many people and how much stuff you’re moving,
  • how much labor you choose to outsource, and
  • the wind-down and start-up costs in each city.

On one end of the scale, if you’re a single person and your possessions amount to a suitcase and a box, moving will be fairly inexpensive, perhaps a few hundred dollars for the transportation and whatever your start-up costs are in your new city (e.g., up-front rent and deposits).

On the other end of the scale, if you’re moving your family and all your stuff from a full house, your transportation costs will be quite high, your wind-down and start-up costs may be high, and you may choose to outsource some of the labor associated with moving to keep it time-efficient.

Buying and selling homes also add layers of expenses that I will not cover in this article.

Components of a Long-Distance Move

Long-distance moves can be expensive both in their direct costs and lost income.

The expense components of your move include:

  • Transporting yourself/your family, including housing and feeding in transit
  • Transporting your possessions, including storage in the new city if necessary
  • Transporting your car(s)
  • Packing materials and labor
  • Wind-down expenses for your old residence
  • Start-up expenses for your new residence, including scouting trips if necessary
  • Unpacking labor
  • Childcare

It’s also vital to plan for the income side of the equation. How much time will you take off between the end of your current position and the start of your next position and what does that translate to in missing dollars from your typical income? How much will maintaining your health insurance cost during that period up until you are covered by your new position?

There is often a trade-off between time and money when it comes to moving. Fast transportation costs more than slow transportation for long-distance moves, but slower transportation may necessitate more time away from work. It costs more to outsource labor such as packing, but if it allows you to take fewer days away from work it may be worthwhile.

When and How to Plan a Frugal Long-Distance Move

Moving long-distance is a major project with many moving pieces, so you should start your planning as soon as you know where you’re headed (if not before!).

Where Will You and Your Stuff Go?

Determine where your new home will be or at least when you will decide where to live.

This requires researching the housing market local to your new position.

If you plan to rent, figure out approximately when you need to sign a lease relative to your start date. The answer may be “not until you arrive in the city” or “several months in advance.” Know that you will have to conduct your housing search in earnest in the month or weeks leading up to that time, which may involve an additional trip to the new city.

If you plan to buy prior to your arrival, it’s never too early to start familiarizing yourself with the housing market and choosing a realtor.

Of course, finding appropriate housing is enormously important to your life and finances, but determining when you will take possession of your new residence will likely impact the method(s) you choose for transporting yourself and your stuff. Namely, when you and your stuff arrive in your new city, where will you/it go? Do you need to arrange for storage for your stuff and lodging for yourself for a period of time before you take possession of your new home?

How Will You and Your Stuff Get There?

Tackle the transportation question. You, your possessions, and your car(s) might travel together or separately, so there are a lot of combinations of methods available. Consider the cost, time, and stress involved in each method.

Ways to transport yourself/your family:

  • Plane
  • Train
  • Bus
  • Car (yours or a rental)
  • Cab of a moving truck

Ways to move your possessions:

  • In a car (yours or a rental)
  • Moving truck/trailer driven by professionals
  • Moving truck or trailer driven by you
  • Pod
  • Shipping (mail, bus, plane)
  • Luggage with you while traveling

Ways to move your car(s):

  • Drive it yourself
  • Trail it behind a moving truck
  • Ship it
  • Hire a driver

Some of the simplest combinations of methods for long-distance moves are:

  • Fast and expensive, lots of stuff: Fly yourself with luggage and hire professionals to move your possessions and your car
  • Fast and inexpensive, little stuff: Drive yourself and your possessions in your car or a rental car
  • Fast and inexpensive, lots of stuff: Drive yourself and your possessions in a rented moving truck trailing your car
  • Slow an inexpensive, little stuff: Fly yourself with luggage and ship your possessions
  • Slow and inexpensive, lots of stuff: Drive your own car with possessions, ship remaining possessions in a pod or boxes

There are many transportation configurations possible, so settle on the one that best conforms with your desired amount of time off, how much money you have available for the move, and the degree you want to be involved with the transportation of your possessions. Be sure to get quotes from several providers of each service you are considering.

Settle on the Dates and Book Everything

Negotiate and finalize your end date for your current position and the start date for your new position. If you are using a professional moving service at any stage, book them as soon as you know the dates. Some services book out weeks and months in advance, and the summer is the busy season.

Prepare for the Move Logistically and Financially

Use the months and weeks leading up to your departure date to prepare for the move to make the final days as smooth as possible.

1) Designate a moving fund

In an ideal situation, you will pay for your move with cash, even if it will later be reimbursed by your employer. Set aside the total amount of money you expect to spend on the move, start-up expenses, etc. plus an extra 10% or more for unexpected expenses.

The more time you have leading up to the move, the more opportunity you have to redirect some of your ongoing savings rate or to earn additional money through side hustling.

If paying for your move with cash is not possible, carefully consider the least damaging type of debt available to you, e.g., a personal bank loan or a 0% interest credit card, and make a plan to pay it off as soon as possible with your new paycheck.

2) Start collecting moving materials for free

You’ll likely need at least some moving materials, e.g., boxes, packing material, tape. Boxes can be readily sources for free in your community. Ask nearby grocery and liquor stores when the best day is to pick up their excess boxes. You can also check craigslist, Freecycle, and Buy Nothing for free boxes. Collect boxes from these sources regularly over the weeks leading up to your move so that you can cover most or all of your needs. Don’t expect to find all the free boxes you need the day before you start packing!

If you end up buying new boxes, consider reselling them once you’ve finished with them to recoup some of your costs.

Packing material is more difficult to reuse so you can check some of the same sources for free material but you may need to buy some of your own.

3) Pare down your possessions

Generally speaking, the less stuff you have to move, the less expensive your move will be. Of course, if you sell vital possessions, there will be a cost to acquire them again in your new city. But think of your move as an opportunity to declutter and make sure you only retain what is most useful and/or important to you.

The possessions that you use frequently will have to be packed up or disposed of last, but in the time leading up to your move, you can go through your less frequently used possessions and either pack them or get rid of them. Selling your possessions is a great way to pad your moving fund, and the more time you give yourself in this process, the more likely you are to be able to sell your stuff. You can also give away your possessions that still have life in them through Buy Nothing or Freecycle or donate them to nonprofit organizations like Goodwill, Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army, etc. Your possessions without remaining value can be recycled or, as a last resort, put in the garbage.

Execute the Move

All your planning and preparation will pay off once you start your move! In the final days leading up to your departure, you will pack everything up and clean your old residence. It will take a lot of work so don’t try to cram it into too little time. If your movers show up and you aren’t fully packed, they will pack for you and charge you an arm and a leg!

A couple final tips:

  • Make sure to pack the things you will need during your move or upon getting into your new place separately and/or with clear labels. You don’t want to have to open all your boxes to find a saucepan or your work clothes!
  • Be prepared to spend above your normal levels on food as you pack and unpack your kitchen and as you devote your free time to packing instead of cooking.
  • Enlist your friends and family to help with packing and even childcare while you pack. (But return the favor when you have the opportunity!)

To hear my personal story of how my husband and I moved cross-country for his first post-PhD Real Job (not very frugally!), listen to my podcast episode dropping 5/27/2019!

Moving to a High Cost-of-Living City on a Postdoc Salary

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In this episode, Emily interviews Dr. Sushmitha Vijaya Kumar, a postdoc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sushmitha recently completed her PhD at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she lived comfortably on her graduate student stipend. However, living in San Diego on a postdoc salary is a whole different level of financial challenge. Sushmitha shares her story of finishing up her PhD, finding housing, and moving from a lower cost-of-living city to a higher cost-of-living city, including the resources she used and the pitfalls she nearly fell into.

Links mentioned in episode

postdoc move

0:00 Introduction

1:06 Please Introduce Yourself

Dr. Sushmitha Vijaya Kumar is a postdoc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. She is originally from India, where she studied for her Bachelor’s and Master’s in biotechnology. She moved to Tennessee for her PhD and worked at the Oak Ridge National Lab.

2:47 How was your life in Knoxville and working at Oak Ridge?

Sushmitha says Knoxville, Tennessee is a beautiful place in the Great Smoky Mountains. Living in Knoxville was affordable. The graduate stipend was more than enough to live comfortably. Oak Ridge National lab has a super computer for bioinformatics and experimental research. The lab is funded by the Department of Energy. They emphasize collaborative research. She also took courses and taught classes at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She learned how government research worked compared to how university research worked. She learned that she preferred the government setup that emphasized collaboration.

Sushmitha’s fiancé got a postdoc at the Salk Institute in May 2018. As she thought about her next step after her PhD, Sushmitha knew she was restricted to the geographic area of San Diego. This is when she started looking for postdoc opportunities at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography.

5:17 What was the stipend in your last year of graduate school?

Sushmitha’s salary stayed the same for the four years of her PhD. She received $24,000 annually. She got about $1800 per month. In Knoxville, a one bedroom apartment is 800 to 900 square feet and $900 per month for rent and utilities, at the maximum. PhD students have at least $1000 remaining after rent for food and travel needs. She says having a car is cheap because gas is around $1.20 per gallon. It is easy and affordable to travel by car. She says Knoxville is very affordable to live in as a graduate student, as well as to save money and do exciting things.

7:17 How did you start preparing for the move to San Diego?

Sushmitha’s fiancé moved in May 2018 and did the groundwork. She says it was more difficult than she expected to make the move. Not only did she need to finish all of her PhD work, she had to pack up the place she lived for four years. They decided to take only the bare essentials in their car. She said it was difficult to let things go. They took a road trip from Knoxville to San Diego in late December. The drive took five days. She says she wasn’t prepared for leaving her friends and the familiar place.

9:07 What was your PhD defense timeline?

Sushmitha says the university’s deadline for defense was November 1st. She went to India in the summer for two months. She returned and decided she wanted to wrap things up. She had one month to write her dissertation and prepare for defense. She defended at the end of October. The very next day she flew to San Diego for her interview for her postdoc position at Scripps. She flew back to Knoxville, then she had fifteen days to finalize her dissertation with comments from her committee and submit it to the university. She also had to finish experiments in the lab. December 13th was graduation, and her family came from India. She had three days to pack up her house and prepare to drive to San Diego. Sushmitha says she felt like she made a wrong decision to graduate early, but she doesn’t regret it now. She would advise other people to take more time. She would’ve loved another month for this process, though she didn’t need another full semester.

12:24 How did you arrange for your new housing in San Diego?

Sushmitha says her fiancé didn’t take a full apartment to himself because the postdoc salary is not enough money to qualify for an apartment. You have to prove that your monthly income is three times the monthly rent to qualify. In San Diego, one bedroom, one bath apartments range from $1600 to $2200. The apartments for $1600 are located farther from the institutions and require a car for the commute, which her fiancé didn’t have. Her fiancé lived with a host family and paid $1000 per month for a room in the house.

Sushmitha contrasts San Diego housing with Knoxville housing. In Knoxville, it is easy to find an apartment because many properties have management offices. You could go to the leasing office and choose from available apartments. In San Diego, no apartment complexes are close to the institutes. Housing is managed by individual landlords, and you have to rent from the owner directly. Sushmitha and her fiancé had to show documentation to prove their income, but Sushmitha didn’t receive her documentation in a timely manner. They lost money to application fees during this process.

Sushmitha says they dealt with scammers during their housing search. They experienced five different scams, but didn’t fall for the scams. She knows people who did fall for scams and paid $500 security deposits for places that weren’t real. She’s never seen this before.

When she finally received her offer letter and documentation, she and her fiancé got a one bed one bath in a duplex. The rent is $2200, so one of her paychecks goes to rent and utilities. Emily summarizes that in San Diego, they needed two incomes to show that they could afford the rent together.

18:25 Where did you find housing listings?

Sushmitha says they used Craigslist, Zillow, Apartments.com, and the Facebook group Free and For Sale University of California, San Diego. On Facebook, people post about roommate openings, available apartments, and advice. She also asked her HR department for help.

She says the scams came from the Facebook group and Craigslist. She posted in the group that they were looking for one bedroom one bathroom and they received fake offers. On Craigslist, some of the listings are scams. The postings include photos of real apartments and seem real. When you email the lister and ask to visit the apartment, you receive an excuse about why they’re out of town and they’ll ask for money without showing you the place.

22:28 How did you find the place you are living in now?

Her current apartment was listed on Zillow. Her fiancé saw the listing the day it was posted. He emailed the agent and got connected with the owners. The owners showed him the place, and he showed the documents. They were the first to contact the owners and they got the apartment. Emily says the process is similar in Seattle. Who arrives first and drops off the information and checks gets the place.

24:00 How much are you making as a postdoc?

Sushmitha makes $50,760 annually. This is the University of California, San Diego postdoc pay rate. It is 10% higher than what the National Institutes of Health recommends for postdoc pay. Monthly, this pay is about $4000 but after taxes and health insurance, it is $3200 take home pay. She says there wasn’t state tax in Tennessee, but California has both state and federal tax. She is an employee with a W-2 and pays social security tax.

Emily shares the example of her husband’s pay after graduate school. His salary was a 40% gross increase but a 20% net increase after taxes and health insurance. You have to take these new costs into account.

26:14 What else do you want to tell us about this transition?

Sushmitha says it’s good to talk to people and know about the city you’re moving to. With the high cost, it was a mental adjustment. She has a hard time with the how much she pays for the apartment and gas. Gas in San Diego is closer to $4 per gallon. Mentally, you have to prepare yourself for higher costs. You think you’ll be able to have leftovers for savings, but it is hard. She mentions that people with computer science jobs in San Diego make more money and may have a different financial situation. But as a postdoc, the financial situation is much tighter. She says they are trying to save money for the wedding, but it is difficult. You have to be prepared for the first year of living in a high cost city.

If you’re moving to a city with well-paid jobs, don’t talk to the people in those position. You need to talk to postdocs and graduate students to know how they live. Sushmitha shares that there are free shuttles for UCSD and everything is walkable. Emily says you can’t apply the same lifestyle from one place to another, and you need a mental adjustment. Talking to your peers is helpful.

30:29 Anything else about your adjustment to postdoc life?

In graduate school, you have a cohort and form tight friendships. As a postdoc, you are more independent and it is harder to make friends. She went to a networking event, but the new postdocs just wanted to make friends instead of network. Emily shares that it is hard to make friends as an adult after moving to a new place.

33:18 Final Comments

Anyone who is making a big move will benefit from this conversation.

33:56 Conclusion