Hallo, from the Netherlands!
Some reflections from a new life.
Greetings, dear readers! I am writing to you from my new home in Leiden, Netherlands. After a week of driving, flying, and driving again to safely transport my dogs here (which could be a whole separate post), my partner and two fur babies are settling into our new lives here with about 9 days under our belts. Moving has prompted some reflections, which I would like to share with you today.
This will be more of a personal post, if you will allow me, but I believe there are some bits of insight for anyone starting a new job or graduate program this fall or transitioning to a new way of life in some way.
Leiden
Leiden is lovely, and the suburb where we live is peaceful and full of green space. Every house has a garden filled with a diverse array of plants, accompanied by birds singing from the early hours of dawn until dusk. At this time of year, the sun rises at 5:45 a.m. and sets at 10 p.m., giving the birds plenty of time to practice their best Pavaratti. The air just feels more oxygenated here.
When I wrote about why I left my academic job in Texas and where I was going next, I mentioned that place was important to both me and my partner. I wrote,
The feel of where I live matters a great deal to me. It’s a place where I can take in a deep breath, and my lungs and chest are filled with a sense of lightness that is simultaneously rooted in the earth.
My nervous system has already started to relax, and I am sleeping better. The tension in my shoulders has eased. Being in the wrong place takes its toll on the body and spirit.
Even though this place already feels better in my bones, it reminds me of the mental effort required to make a significant life change. Learning to navigate bus routes, deciding what food to buy when every brand is unfamiliar, figuring out where to get good coffee, orienting your brain to where home is in relation to everything else, learning Dutch, and attempting to notice nuanced social cues that reflect Dutch culture are just a few of the many new brain patterns we’re forming.
Forging those neuropathways
Every new experience requires the brain to reprogram itself for scenarios it has never seen before. These shifts are relatively minor on their own, such as deciding which new brand of shampoo to purchase, but taken together, they require a lot of us.
People in the Netherlands, for example, frequently use bank transfers rather than credit cards to make purchases. This requires you to type long identification codes to pay for things. Because I am dyslexic, getting these numbers right is a slow process that requires me to triple and quadruple-check myself. It has been exhausting and has caused me to avoid detail-oriented tasks, such as following step-by-step instructions.
Kate and I frequently laugh at each other because we both lose track of what we are saying in the middle of a sentence after a long day of navigating basic life tasks here. Most days, my brain feels like mush by 4 p.m.
I have moved countries before, so I know we will figure out how to navigate our new lives here quickly, and it will not be as exhausting for long. Furthermore, because the vast majority of people we meet speak English fluently, we have not encountered the language barriers that I have when moving to other countries.
A change of scenery is a wonderful opportunity to challenge one's brain in new ways and discover new possibilities. Kate and I have always noticed that when we move, our eating habits and preferences change. We discover new foods and change our eating habits. The Saturday market a few blocks from our house promises a weekly routine of purchasing farm-fresh vegetables.
Starting a new job or a new grad program
The moral of my story today is that change is a marvelous but exhausting experience, and it is critical to allow yourself to feel tired after a simple trip to the grocery store in order to rewire those neuropathways. Consider how much sleep babies need when they are completely new to the world and must learn almost everything from scratch. Growing requires an enormous amount of energy.
For those of you starting a new job in a new location this fall, give yourself plenty of time to adjust to the daily grind of living somewhere new. Even if you are not moving to a foreign country, you will need to learn where you live in relation to work and necessities, where to buy groceries, how to navigate various university websites, where your classrooms are, the subtle cues of department politics, and so on. If you have little teaching experience before starting your new job, you will have a lot to learn about teaching multiple classes at once.
If you are starting out on the tenure track at your new job, I usually recommend setting low research goals for the first semester to give yourself time to adjust. Perhaps all you need to do is finish your R&R with minor revisions and postpone new projects until your brain has more room for new ideas.
For those of you who begin graduate programs this fall, you will most likely be adjusting to a new location, but you will also need to learn academic culture. Like other cultures, the rules and underlying beliefs that drive that culture are not immediately apparent, and learning about the values, beliefs, and customs will require a significant amount of mental energy. You will make mistakes in this new culture, but you will also meet friendly people who will help you understand the norms and expectations. You will also experience culture shock.
Because of all these required adjustments, I recommend that graduate students take time in their first semester and even their first year to adjust to the pace, expectations, and rituals of academia.
In the end, dear readers, growing requires both mental and physical energy, and giving oneself grace is essential for allowing nature's beautiful process to take shape in us.
Now excuse me while I take a nap.
I love the Netherlands.
What great advice and wisdom! And a delightful peek into your life abroad!