Two years on from graduating and I've become my computer science degree isn't worth the paper it was printed on, so I've made the decision to try and swing a civil engineering degree in two years. Enough credits transfer that it should be a normal class load. But beyond that, I want to get the hell out of the south yesterday. I want to give living in the PNW a shot and I'd rather avoid waiting another two years for it because I'm at that age where I get very self-conscious about what little time left I have as a """young""" person and how I need to meet somebody or get ready for a dating market where most people my age are taken. We're working with layers of complexes here.
My plan is to see if I can't convince the two friends of mine who were already looking to move to come with me, work a year so I qualify for in-state tuition, then do a two year in-and-out at the university of oregon. On the surface, moving 2500 miles away from the only place I've ever lived to go somewhere I've only heard about through the distorted lens of media in order to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt is a fantastically awful idea. Upon closer inspection, it continues to feel like a very bad idea. I could very easily end up far worse off than I started, and I'm already in a very precarious spot. But you know what? I've only done what I felt like were good, safe ideas so far and I'm deeply dissatisfied with where that's left me. I went for a safe major that was supposedly guaranteed employment in a high-earning field and after eating all of the time and money that degrees generally do, it did nothing for me. So now I'm going to take a risk on going where (I think) I want to go to do what (I think) I want to do. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't terrified of the consequences of my own actions, but I just can't take living in the fucking suburban south another year.
I have to acknowledge that, along the shallowest dimension, I want some place that lines up more with my personal aesthetic tastes. Cowboy country pick-up bullshit grates against me tremendously. But more practically, the southern states are on a downward trend. They're the most conservative, the more environmentally at-risk, and the poorest, all of which are troubling signs for the future of the people who live here. Maybe the proper Communist thing to do would to be to stay and fight the rising tide, but at the end of the day, I am a coward who knows no community.
My schedule is pretty rushed since I have to be there before September if I want to qualify for in-state tuition for next Fall. I'll miss my parent's dogs (as much mine as theirs) deeply, and I feel guilty that one of them is getting old and I won't be there to see him through to the end. I'll miss bluebell, gumbo, and Mardi Gras. As frustrating as they can be, I'll miss my parents and my sister. And that's the heart of it. I don't know if I'm giving up everything I've ever known because I'm so internet poisoned that I think I'll be happy because the vague notion of communism is more popular, the economy is better, and I think cold weather is cool. So that's it for this pseudo-diary entry. Can anybody relate? More broadly, has anybody here bootstrapped themselves in a wholly new place before?
Portland is great, and while the PNW is expensive, it’s a lot cheaper if you can live without a car, which is easier in Portland than a lot of west coast cities.
I worked for 11 years as a structural engineer, and am now in software. I will say, while the work is fun, it is not well compensated for the level of anxiety that comes with designing structures for human habitation and the abysmal level of technical review given at most companies.
There’s also a bit of a slump on right now, since people don’t know if steel is going to double in price or not. But that shouldn’t be a concern since hopefully all that will be sorted by the time you graduate.