I finished my master’s degree in 2006 and ever since then I thought about and talked about going back for my PhD. Unfortunately, this meant leaving the area my husband and I called home. In 2009, after a large amount of research and evaluation we decided it would be the right time to make this move. I quit my job, we loaded everything we owned into the back of a moving truck and headed 1,200 miles north from our home in Florida. At that time, my husband had not found a position in the area, but we were sure he would be joining me in a couple of months. Several people said they would help us out and my husband works in a field that is pretty mobile.
Fast forward 18 months and still no job in the state where I was going to school. This meant that one of us was on a plane every 3 weeks to visit. In addition, living in a small college town with little else to do was not fun for someone who had come from a large metro area. I also realized that winter was even worse than I remembered. I was going to be turning 30 living in a town I did not like, with a workload that was incredibly heavy and living hundreds of miles away from my husband. It was not a fun situation
During the time I was in school, my husband was recruited to a position outside of Florida. It was a great opportunity for him. It was more money, more responsibility and it got us a little closer to each other. If we each drove six hours, we could meet in the middle for the weekend. Not ideal, but an option that we hadn't had for my first year of school. We also decided that this was where I would move once I had completed the coursework for my degree.
