Moving decision paralysis

This post is me talking to myself about moving since I'm trying to make a decision. It is boring. Move along. Nothing to see.

I grew up in my current city, so moving here was easy. I knew which neighborhood I wanted to live in, and where to find apartment listings, and I even had a friend in my former city to live with. All I had to do was come here and find an apartment. I was lucky, and we took the first apartment we saw, though we spent 2 whole days going through the rest of our list to make sure.

Coming to a city that I'd never visited prior to my interview is much harder. Simultaneous with looking for an apartment, I have to decide which neighborhood. I am an urban person and have never lived in a full-fledged suburb before, so I'd planned on living in the city. Plus almost everyone I spoke to in the suburbs sounded bored and lonely. I've lived in most of the major cities in the US, and went to elementary school with 8 year olds throwing gang signs, but I wasn't prepared for the kind of city with vacant lots that people turn into inner city farms.

The inner city farms and burnt-up boarded-up buildings and lack of supermarketsprompted my flight to the suburbs. A friend who grew up in the area reassured me that it was not white flight, since everyone who could afford it moved out of the city, and indeed in my several trips back and forth to the suburbs in the middle of the day, more than 95% of the public transit riders were minorities. I convinced myself that I liked an apartment complex built in 1950: it was well-designed, a 20 minute walk to the train, and cheap, and I bought some fantastic cheap produce half a mile away. Plus, the two guys I knew who were moving to the city at the same time also sold out to the apartment complexes.

After two trips back and forth to the suburbs, I started realizing the implications of a 40-45 minute commute each way, and decided to give the city another chance. This time, an RA in the department suggested a neighborhood where I could safely walk alone at night, and which had a supermarket to boot. An awful overpriced chain supermarket, but I didn't take it for granted. I could get to both offices in under 20 minutes without a car. This neighborhood, ironically, was also mass-produced industrial housing, no less soulless and depersonalized than the apartment complexes, just about 40 years older and more compact with no 1 bedroom apartments. I didn't have much time to call landlords in advance, and after days of heat exhaustion, I didn't really care that I only saw a few apartments.

I left the city without getting an apartment. I have one possibility in the suburbs and two in the city, and I have to make a decision and sign a lease, so I can get on to the next step. I'm on the verge of signing a lease for a city apartment that I'd need a roommate for, but it feels risky to put money on the line and commit to living with a roommate I've never met. Holding out for a 1 bedroom that I've never seen seems somehow preferable to a roommate whom I've never met, although if I am holding out on that I will feel in suspense the whole time. I've usually had roommate situations work out well even when I've never met them, but it is always complicated.

The suburbs sound boring and listless, except I now know two women in the suburban apartment complex where I would live, one of whom is doing a grad degree where I'm doing a postdoc. And I know a few more people in the same suburb, so it could actually be socially okay to live there. Except there's nothing to do there. And I could have a 2 bedroom apartment for less than a 1 bedroom in the city. And that produce market was nice. Even though it's not my first choice to live in the suburbs, at least then I would have an apartment that I have actually seen and have the issue settled. In talking to people, some of whom are not happy in the suburbs, many of them said that they took the place in the suburbs because it was easy.

Plausible deniability

When I was visiting my new postdoc to get my ID and such, I was incredulous about the money thing. Several times I asked them, "My advisor and I agreed that I was moving and starting Sept 1. Should I change that plan since I am being paid starting July 1?" And they said that I did not have to change anything. At the end of our meeting, the admin asked what I was doing during the summer, and I said that I was at my current job through July. She asked if it was a problem for me to be paid by two sources, and I said that my current job wasn't government funds, so it shouldn't be. All she said was that I should check with my advisor to see whether I needed to do anything special given that I was being paid all summer.

I got an email from my advisor saying that I'm not being paid now, and I should say when I want to start working and being paid, so I asked the admin about the apparent discrepancy:

Finally, do you happen to know whether [advisor] has okayed paying me for July and August? His email below sounds a bit like he thought that I was registered for insurance, but not getting a stipend now. When I called him on Friday, I just left a message and didn't get a call back, so haven't yet been able to speak with him about this.

Her response:

I know he will provide the health insurance for you starting July 1st, but my understanding is that he can't pay your
stipend if you aren't here yet. If you could begin the Post Doc sooner than August 31st, we have the stipend to support you. But if you aren't here during July and August, then he can't pay you. Does this make sense? This was the concern I expressed to you last week.

Let me know what you and he decide about your start date. We can revise your letter to reflect the correct dates, if necessary.

That was not the concern that she expressed last week! In email she just has to cover her behind. I hate how outlandish it makes me sound, "You thought we would pay you when you weren't working? How ridiculous!"

Sometimes I feel like my life is stranger than everyone else's.

Update: I got back 1 month of the pay by arguing that during August I'm presenting at a few conferences, so it's relevant. And I got half an office at the main campus, instead of a room shared with 17 people. And after thinking so much about it, the total time that all took was 90 seconds.

Not really a free lunch; being a postdoc means asking for things

Perhaps this is a lesson in who really runs things. I asked my postdoc if I could arrange for a month of gap health insurance, and I would gladly pay for it. They said that they could do that, and pay for it, but it had to be 2 months for admin reasons.

When they were setting up the insurance, the budget director of the research center discovered that there was money in the postdoc fund to start funding me 2 months early, so decided to go ahead and do that --- perhaps it is use it or lose it? And afterwards she and another administrator decided to ask my advisor whether it was okay. Neither heard back from him on the question. Now I have to ask him if he's okay with it, and if he wants me to do anything for the extra funding. As long as he really is okay with it, it's a great deal, though potentially an uncomfortable way to start off. "Do you mind that your budget director decided to give me two months of free money?"

Now I'm asking another favor. There are two campuses: one campus is where my advisor and his mostly-MD colleagues in the research center have offices for the (possibly rare?) occasions when they are actually in their office. The other campus has everything else, including journal clubs, seminars, postdocs and PhD faculty in the same research area, and grad students. I suggested that I work partially with a PhD faculty member at the central campus partly because the work honestly looks interesting, but also because I want the excuse to be at the main campus. Currently I'm slated to have a normal set-up in the distant campus, whatever that is: cubicle, half an office, etc. In the main campus, I'm slated to have a desk in a room with 17 other people, mostly RAs. So I have to ask for a half office there as well.

The administrator is fantastic on these issues: she was coaching me on how to ask for the extra space because she agrees that postdocs are horribly isolated and they should be around as many other people as possible. Honestly, I want to be at the main campus because it seems more fun and is easier to get to, so I keep reminding myself that I have legitimate academic reasons to be at the main campus, so I shouldn't feel hesitant about asking.

Last interview of the year

I had my last interview of the year in mid-June.

The department was founded about a decade ago, but as of a few years ago there was exactly one faculty member left in the department. It's a field with an obvious non-academic set of careers, and the chair had left, and while they were working to replace the former chair, they appointed an 80 year old interim chair, and didn't want to hire new faculty, but they didn't appoint a new chair for several years. Meanwhile all but one of the other faculty left and were not replaced. And this department still had hundreds of students which somehow continued to be taught.

Now there is a full contingent of faculty, mostly non-tenure-track but relatively senior, and the recent years of turmoil have succeeded in decreasing the number of students by 30%, which they see as fortunate under the circumstances. This year they are making several tenure-track hires, which they've been interviewing feverishly for. The delays were due to delays in the central administration's approval of the hires.

More new postdoc gratitude: free money

My new postdoc advisor decided to set my start date me 2 months before he asked me to start working, so as far as I can tell, I get two free months of salary, effectively a 20% signing bonus (as it were.) I had been worrying about how I was going to cover all my moving expenses since the postdoc does not reimburse moving, but this does it.

NIH stipend levels frozen

I've noticed that NIH stipend levels have not increased for years. Does anyone know whether anyone is organizing a protest of this? It seems ridiculous, especially given the recent inflation in energy and food costs.

Moving practicalities

I'm planning my move for this summer, and finding a few things very helpful so want to pass them on in case anyone else does:

- Movingscam.org has reviews of different moving options. The site's somewhat unfortunate name came about because someone had their belongings ransomed by moving companies, and when they started looking into the consumer issues, they found many moving companies gave low estimates and then raised them once the move was in progress and it was too late for the customer to back out. One story that I read there had a woman actually decide to forfeit her belongings rather than pay the several thousand dollars that the moving company requested from her.

They recommend a very small number of services --- full service, cargo shipping/partial trailer, relocubes, and self-driven moving vans --- and their motto seems to be "if you want it done right, do it yourself." From reading their stories, I understand this perspective.

- ABF UPack has been consistently friendly and helpful in all of my planning for different moving scenarios: they email quotes right away almost all the time and show which days are cheaper, and if you call they will tell you the price difference between different days. The other relocube places are less responsive and the people I spoke with seem more like salespeople. Upack customer service people haven't tried to pressure me at all, and they answered all my questions and explained the options, and all five of the people I've spoken with in the past two years at their depot terminals and customer service were just extremely friendly and helpful. Moving isn't their main business --- they're a cargo shipper --- so that may explain the difference from the other places. (I tried to use them for my move last year, but due to parking regulations in my current city, I wasn't able to.)

Also they gave me a $50 discount for mentioning the above website when I called them after making my reservation. I had thought that mentioning the website gave the website some funding for referrals, and hadn't expected a discount, but it turns out that it gives a discount.