I received some discouraging news this past week that’s thrown me a little bit in the decision I’ve already made to begin training full time. I finally told my boss a couple weeks ago that I’d be moving to Chicago in August and thus have to quit, but he was optimistic that I could stay on the team and work remotely. It was such a relief to know I’d be able to keep my job working with people I know and like and knowing how flexible the work would be. It made it so much easier to compartmentalize this big life change of changing careers. I am very sad to be leaving my job, I like it for the most part and I’m good at it and I worked so hard for my chemistry degree that I’m a little mournful that I may not get to do science anymore. I am finally at a point in chemistry where I could have a lot more options for jobs with my experience and I just got a nice raise at work so it’s really hard to be leaving the field. Especially if my other options are part time work in the service industry where I’ll probably be underpaid and it’ll be much harder to fit around the full time training schedule. I plan on reaching out to chemical companies to see if they could use any part time work and then reaching out to recruiters. So I’ve still got a plan before I hit up my old employer, Spencer’s.
Of course this also adds to worries about money. I do have a healthy savings account but paying tuition and rent and other living expenses will drain that fairly quickly I believe, so as much as I’d like to take some time to fully focus on training I’m not sure that’ll be in the cards for me. And I’m afraid that finding a job will take a few weeks so I'm hesitant to even put off the job search at all. My partner is aware of all of this and he’ll take the brunt of expenses for a little bit but that can’t be a long term solution. I did reach out again to HR to see if they’re were any work arounds for me staying employed and she said she would look into it further so I’ll keep my fingers crossed but I’m not going to bank on it.
In other news an update on the apartment hunt: I know the area I’m going to be living so it’s very easy to keep an eye on apartments as they appear. Until basically now, landlords wouldn’t even talk to me about touring apartments because August was too far out but now apartments available in the right time frame are being posted. Luckily my sister and her husband live out near Chicago so they can tour places for us! We did apply to an apartment they checked out for us and are waiting to hear back if we got it and we did meet all the pre-reqs for it so that feels like were close to checking that off the to do list. My last day of work is August 15th and we will probably begin moving that weekend. I plan on hosting some sort of going away party but that is yet to be confirmed
So in summary I’m having lots of thoughts of “was this the right decision?” “Am I going to regret this?” Mixed with immense excitement that I’ll be moving soon and have access to training with SO MANY awesome coaches. I keep thinking about the things I’m potentially giving up. I’m at a point in my career where I finally have a decent amount of “disposable” income so I feel like I’m giving up European vacations, owning a home or the ability to just buy a coffee everyday if I want. But what’s the alternative? Not pursuing my dreams? It’s just hard to be leaving a comfortable secure lifestyle and returning to being a struggling student. But then I’ll get a mildly aggressive email at work and suddenly I’m grateful that I’ve got a reason to leave(:
