I finally got some good results from a last experiment, and now that thesis chapter is written. Currently, I'm writing the last 4-6 pages of my conclusion chapter, then on to deal with some revisions and the final 30 pages of the thesis. I'm in a very good position to have my thesis ready to submit by mid-September.
A month ago, I still had hopes things would work out for us to be able to stay in Australia. What I found, though, was that funding seems to be getting increasingly tight here. Since you can count all of Australia's major universities on two hands, that means any prospects at all for a new PhD graduate without 15 publications is slim to none. When I submit my thesis, I get a new student visa that lets me stay until graduation, but without a job, there's no money to live on. We technically could have lived off Michelle's income while I spent time job hunting, but if I came up empty-handed after several months, that would be a waste of time and money. I need to get on with my new career.
So after the bittersweet moment when we came to the realization that we would have to leave Australia, we started making plans to move to Canada. The plan is to live with Michelle's parents for perhaps a year while I look for a job and we build up our savings. This arrangement takes a great deal of financial pressure off me, so I can take my time finding the right opportunity and not "just a job" because I need a paycheck. With further reflection, I know this is the right decision. The research group I'm in is starting to become micromanaged in the same manner as the I.T. jobs I hated, and I know I would not thrive in such a stifled environment. Additionally, post-doc salaries here have dropped from around $70K to $50K. It's hard enough living in Australia on student-level funding, but without full residency benefits, trying to support a young family on $50K is unrealistic.
Yesterday we had a garage sale and got rid of many of our things. Some furniture and appliances didn't sell, so those are on ebay now. This coming Friday, a freight forwarder will be picking up about 4 cubic meters of stuff to ship to Canada. Then a couple days later, we move out of our apartment into some temporary housing. (Short story: shitty construction; owners sued and won; now repairs are being done.) The temporary place is going to be a serviced apartment somewhere in Wollongong proper. Due to the timing of my thesis submission and the termination of my student funding on 15 September, we won't be going back to our old apartment. We will be arriving in Canada sometime in late September.
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