From Campus to Cubicles

Musings from moving to a new city

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Hey guys 👋 Deekshit here with today’s post. Before we get started, I want to introduce you to a new challenge my friend and I discovered. 

It’s called the 6 peaks challenge. If you are a hiking enthusiast then you should definitely check it out. The 6 peaks challenge is basically you climbing the top 6 peaks around your location and if interested you can register for a certificate and the registration fee goes towards charity. 

I am on my journey of the 6 peaks challenge in the bay area where last weekend I climbed Mt. Tamalpais in north San Francisco. It was a grueling 15 mile hike and my whole Sunday went into recovery. 

Here’s a view from the peak of Mt. T

Moving on to the topic of this newsletter. I want to talk about my observation of moving to a new city after graduating from Duke 6 months ago.

Moving to the Bay area 

I have a completely remote job and I could have moved anywhere in the United States. The first question people ask me when I say my job is remote is 

 Why did you move to California?

The answer for me is simple. I want to be around people that are interested in technology and want to talk about it. 

If someone is interested in acting and Hollywood, why would they live in any place other than LA. 

If it’s finance, investment banking, etc.. it would be NYC. 

I have to say that I am privileged enough to make this decision as I currently don’t have additional responsibilities. 

Also being remote, I have the additional flexibility to move again if needed. 

So far, I have met so many interesting people in tech and it has furthered my bias in staying in the bay area longer. 

One thing I have learnt is that each city has a vibe and one needs to understand if they will resonate with the vibe of that city. (Vibe - Culture, community, events, weather, and food) 

If I were to move again to a different city, I would definitely visit the place and stay for a couple of weeks before uprooting my life and shifting. 

One of the most recurring topics that has been running in my head after moving has been about putting Structure into my life.  

Structure in life 

When I was at Duke, I could feel that I was rapidly growing. 

Every day brought about new conversations, and new lessons were learned that unlocked new perspectives. 

As an Individual, I didn’t have to actively put effort to seek them out. As long as I made sure I was on the college campus I was bound to learn something new. 

But, now post-college the frequency of new conversations, and new lessons that I am learning is low. 

I realize that it needs an active involvement and investment of my time to do the same. 

• I have to actively think about what I want to improve 

• I have to actively attend multiple meetups/networking events post work 

• I have to actively read books/ listen to podcasts to learn something new 

In college, everything was structured and there was pressure for me to complete things or otherwise I would not have a job/career.  

To be honest, there was a fire under my ass. 

But, now post-college and with a job. Life becomes unstructured. 

It also becomes a bit easygoing now that I have money flowing in every month.  

Even though you might have goals, most of the time there is no pressure to finish them and you always push it to “tomorrow”. 

I remember during college thinking that I wanted to do x,y,z things after college and observed that I wasn’t making any plans to do those list items. 

Quickly realized that if I don’t structure my life, time, and energy I won’t be able to do any of those things. 

I would live a life that I didn’t plan/build. 

Guess, structuring your life the way you like it is part of adulting. 

Interestingly, no one has ever spoken or taught us about it. An additional thing we have to figure out ourselves. 

It’s very easy for people to not structure their lives based on what they want and follow what their social circle is doing. 

Initially, when I moved to the bay area I wanted to attend networking events so that I could meet new people. 

But, my friends didn’t want to attend and most of these events were 40 minutes away. So I kept pushing it saying I’ll attend the next one. 

I didn’t attend any event for a month, but then I realized as a remote employee the main reason I moved to the bay area is to meet new people.

That’s when I decided that irrespective of who comes, I will attend as many events as I can.

Turns out, I actually enjoyed attending these events alone, and slowly once I started going many of my friends joined.

Honestly, it gets hard to do the things you want to do post-college, because various people put expectations on what you have to do. 

Sometimes you hang out with friends and do things you actually don’t want to do just for the sake of being polite. 

So it becomes our responsibility to consciously dedicate time and energy into the things that we want to do otherwise someone else will decide how we spend our time. 

The only thing we have in our life is autonomy in how we want to structure and use our time. 

Conclusion 

Today’s newsletter is a reminder for you and me that if we don’t protect our time and energy and use it towards what we are interested (career, travel, passion, etc..) in our life 5 years from now would not be the same as how we imagined it.   

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That’s it for today’s post folks! I hope this post regarding user research experience was useful and please reply to this newsletter if you guys have more questions about user research. 

Don’t forget to follow Andy and Deekshit on Twitter.