Three, to get ready

I hate moving.

Hopefully, once I actually get out to WCU, I'll be finished moving for a while. The apartment I found to rent is very small, and a ways from campus, so chances are I won't stay there throughout the entirety of my PhD. Chances are I'll be moving again at some point in the near future. Although I may be just sick enough of packing, loading, driving, unloading, and unpacking that I hold off as long as possible before doing it again.

I turned in the keys to my apartment, organized the items I want to take and those I'm going to leave, had my car checked over for travel, finished the myriad of other tasks I had to complete before leaving. For the past few days, I've been extremely busy, my activities continuous and all leading up to my departure. This marathon of tasks, however, has been peppered with brief periods of downtime, which is when my nerves start to catch up with me.

For the majority of the summer, I've avoided thinking about leaving. I'm excited to go. I'm looking forward to starting school, and to everything that goes along with it. But I am also sad to leave behind the little life I've built here, even knowing that it would never take me where I want to be ten years down the road. So I've pushed all thoughts of moving aside, and
focused on the present-- working on the ranch, riding Jet, barrel racing, spending time with my family and friends. Now, with my move date only hours away, I find all those thoughts catching up with me, and, along with them, the nervousness.

I think in large part the nerves stem from a complete lack of knowledge concerning expectations. I have only vague ideas about grad student life. I understand that it is fundamentally different than undergrad, and I've read countless accounts of current and former grad students' experiences. But programs vary so widely by discipline and department, and the very act of doing PhD research is so unique to each individual, that I literally can only guess at what my new life will be like.

That is likely the hardest part of this whole transition for me. I am the type of person who plans everything out in advance, as far as possible. When I envision the future, I am detail-specific, and reassure myself using a host of scenarios that I play out in my mind beforehand. But with moving, and with starting school, I just don't know what to expect, and thus cannot plan for anything beyond driving through my first long day, the only thing with which I have relevant experience.

I keep trying to remind myself that I've done this before, although in not quite so dramatic a fashion. Over two years ago now, I moved to Newcastle, WY. I had little idea of expectations then, much as I do now. I was going to an unfamiliar place to a new, unfamiliar job with no prior conceptions about what my day-to-day life would entail. I was nervous. I was sad to be leaving home. I didn't know what was up ahead. But I moved, and I started my job, and I made it through my internship just fine.

The difference now lies in several hundred additional miles from home, and 5 or more years away instead of 5 or more months. But hopefully, my path toward a PhD, with a cohort of new people, a built-in social outlet, a college-friendly town, and a host of like-minded people, will serve me far better than a tiny coal town in northeastern Wyoming. That, at least, I know is something I can look forward to.