Tag: moving

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Moving On

We posted the news last week on Facebook but I haven’t had much time to write anything here about it.  However, for posterity’s sake, here goes:

We’re leaving St. Louis…again…

This time, however, it’s so I can (finally) begin my first “grown up” job as Assistant Professor of Biology at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, MO.  I am charged with teaching Anatomy & Physiology I and II, as well as Principles of Anatomy & Physiology.  That’s going to be 15 credit hours worth of teaching each semester, so I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me.  It will absolutely be challenging, but I’m looking forward to moving off the lab bench for awhile and instead focusing on getting students to appreciate, if not love, physiology as I do.

When we moved to Iowa, Brooke had to leave Bridges CSS and, unfortunately, it took awhile before she was able to find anything comparable (or even acceptable…) doing similar things up north.  Thankfully, unbeknownst to us, Bridges CSS was in the process of buying Bridges of Missouri, their sister company based in Sedalia, MO, which just so happens to be 30 min south of Marshall.  Thus, with a stroke of providence or blind luck, she gets to keep doing what she loves while I begin this new adventure.  She will return to St. Louis once or twice a month to help facilitate the connection between these two arms of the company, but she’s already got her work cut out for her in integrating the workings of the two companies.  She’s excited to mix up what she’s been doing, too!

We’re on a pretty short time table now.  We spent the last few weekends in Sedalia and Marshall investigating houses (more “grown up” things we’re finally doing…) and we think we’ve settled on one that we’re going to make an offer on shortly.  My position officially begins August 1st, but I technically don’t have to be on campus until August 18th (school starts August 25th).  There are all kinds of challenges with pulling that off in a limited period of time, but we think we’re moving in the right direction and can make it happen.

Still, we’ve got a lot of packing to do…

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“I love it when a plan comes together.”

Back on June 24th, I was informed that money was getting tight and that I should start looking for other opportunities elsewhere.  Obviously, this news wasn’t exactly welcome, as the timing of it effectively prevented me from being able to jump directly into a teaching position somewhere (as those positions are almost all filled by the end of June).  As I’ve posted before on the blog, we made the decision that Brooke would go back to work in St. Louis in mid-July to help ensure that we would have health insurance in case I had to leave my position in Iowa before I found something down in St. Louis.

Long story short, there weren’t many options.  I may write at greater length about this in the future, but basically, most industry positions want people less qualified than I am.  As in, folks with bachelor’s degrees.  I applied to practically every industrial company in St. Louis that did pharmaceutical work, including some generic chemical companies, but in the majority of cases, I never heard anything back.  I did have a strong option with Monsanto (that I will definitely write more about later), but that fell through after the third interview.

Thankfully, I came upon another option at Washington University, so last week, I accepted a position as a postdoc in a lab in their Department of Psychiatry.  I’ll be doing work that is radically different from what I’ve done in the past, so there’s going to be a steep learning curve, even moreso than the one I had here at Iowa.  Still, I will continue to work with catecholamines, so at least some of the work will be familiar to me.  I’ll write more about this once I’m down there.

This post is mostly with regards to the timeline.  My position will start November 1, so the current plan is that we’ll be moving down to St. Louis on October 22 to a house off of Kingshighway in south St. Louis City.  The house is a shade smaller than we have now, but it has a two-car garage, a fenced in yard for Edie, and has enough bedrooms that we can surely find room for everyone, as well as have guests over from time to time.  And the pantry is huge.  And it’ll have a dishwasher and a garbage disposal (which we’ve lived without since living in Iowa).  Brooke will work that following week while Meg and I get our bearings and take a little time off.  Meg will start at her new daycare on October 31.

I guess we’ll have to send her in a costume on her first day?

So the plan is set in motion.  We’ve got a few weeks to finalize everything, and my Dad and Brooke’s Mom were very helpful in boxing lots of stuff up this past weekend, so I think we’re on pretty solid footing for jumping state lines again.

Almost 4 months after getting the news, and after 3 months of living most of the week apart, we will be back together in St. Louis again.

As Hannibal Smith is so fond of saying: “I love it when a plan comes together.”