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12 Jul 2017

Coping with Moving

I move A LOT. And it doesn’t get any freakin’ easier. The longest I’ve ever (in my whole life) lived in one place is 7 years, and most places around 3 years. I moved to York a week ago and have been struggling with feelings of loneliness. It’s like every time I have a solid friendship circle, it’s time to move away again. [Disclaimer: I’m very privileged to lead the life I do; this post is just about one of the aspects that I struggle with]


[Disclaimer #2] I started this blog post and Twitter poll on Tuesday morning and in the afternoon was hit with some pretty heavy family stuff, which compounded all the feels. And now I’m writing it with all that in mind.

 Academics, and Early Career Researchers in particular, often have to move to follow jobs and fieldwork, and attempt to solve the "2 body problem" (finding a place for self and partner). Half the people that answered my poll had moved 2-5 times in the last 10 years, and a quarter moved more than 5 times.    

 I was counting the times I'd moved to a different town or country but found that lots of people had the experience of moving within the same town because of temporary contracts (and I'd moved within St Andrews too, because of fieldwork). The logistics of moving can be stressful in and of themselves, and having the uncertainty of those temporary contracts forcing you to move sounds horrible!


 There's also the point that while you might not move house, moving university and commuting can be really hard - like having two separate lives, going on (1) where you live and (2) where you work.


Next, I asked people what the hardest part of moving was.


63% said that making friends was the hardest part. But 14% said "Nothing, I love moving!" which is also important to acknowledge. While my own experience is one of "Oh no, I had such great friends and now I have to work really hard to find people that amazing", plenty of people enjoy the process of making friends. And that's really cool!


Holly's comment really struck a chord - "it's missing the old stuff". I think I can do moving and settling into a physical space, but I really miss the old friendships that I left behind. And making new friends was clearly something that lots of people struggle with.

 So what does the university do to help introduce newcomers? 

I was pretty shocked that 65% of respondents hadn't been introduced to people through their university's induction process. Luckily, when I arrived at York I was led around offices and introduced to a few people (who later introduced me to more people etc.) It was really helpful!! This is something that all universities should do in one way or another.

If some universities aren't doing much to help newcomers integrate, are people in the department taking it upon themselves?

 These numbers look a bit better, with 2/3rds of people being invited to social events personally or by email (I think that personal invites are more effective; sometimes I shy away from an e-invite if I don't think I'll know anyone there). But that's still 1/3 of people not being invited to departmental social events. 

 I wondered whether people had personal strategies for dealing with moving to a new place.
Okay, it was quite mean getting to choose between these three options, because I actually do all of them (also physio and massage is wonderful!) But having forced a choice, 50% of people find nesting into their new home helps and 36% like joining clubs, gyms, teams etc.

 Joining clubs and things is a good way of meeting people outside of the department, and my final question was "in the end, where were most of your new friends?"
It's not massively surprising that most people make most of their friends within the department. I'd be really curious to see how this demographic changes the longer you live somewhere. Whether it would start to shift towards people outside the department and university as you met people in different ways.

 So, yeah, my difficulties moving this time have probably been really affected by personal stuff that's going on simultaneously (when it rains, it pours - am I right?) However, it sounds like a lot of people find it hard to make friends at first, and there's not always the university or departmental structures in place to include newcomers. I've been pretty lucky coming to York, and it would be great if, in a career where so many people have to move so regularly, there were more standard procedures across academia for welcoming people. 

 Ima let Dr Girl sum up this poll thread & blog post:

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