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Moving from Iowa to North Carolina
Delzhand
Agrias Fucking OaksRegistered User, Transition Team regular
Agrias Fucking OaksRegistered User, Transition Team regular
My wife has been accepted into grad school at UNCG, and that's where we're going! We have plenty of time to plan, or at least we will - we both graduate from University of Iowa in May. We're probably going to head out there in early August.
I've lived in Iowa my whole life. That's 28 years of midwest living. Moving our shit from Davenport to Ames four years ago is the furthest I've ever moved. We have one car, a Ford Focus, and we're probably going to purge our belongings down to the point where a single medium sized rental truck will accommodate all our stuff, which shouldn't be too hard.
But I wouldn't mind some input on a few key points, primarily apartment hunting.
How early should we start looking for an apartment? We've gone through Apartment Finder and found a place we really like, but if we apply, like, now, will the lease office hold a place for us for free, or tell us to apply closer to the actual date?
Is application likely to be affected by the fact that I might not have a job in NC at the time of application? Applications seem to want to know income in terms of $ per year, when I've been working maybe 15 hours a week at a work-study job on campus, that doesn't quite cover requirements like "income must by 2x monthly rent".
How does job hunting usually work? I've got a pretty robust skillset and a lot of experience, but I'm not sure how to look for jobs in an area I'm not physically located in.
Where are the good geek hangouts in Greensboro?
I've lived in Iowa my whole life. That's 28 years of midwest living. Moving our shit from Davenport to Ames four years ago is the furthest I've ever moved. We have one car, a Ford Focus, and we're probably going to purge our belongings down to the point where a single medium sized rental truck will accommodate all our stuff, which shouldn't be too hard.
But I wouldn't mind some input on a few key points, primarily apartment hunting.
How early should we start looking for an apartment? We've gone through Apartment Finder and found a place we really like, but if we apply, like, now, will the lease office hold a place for us for free, or tell us to apply closer to the actual date?
Is application likely to be affected by the fact that I might not have a job in NC at the time of application? Applications seem to want to know income in terms of $ per year, when I've been working maybe 15 hours a week at a work-study job on campus, that doesn't quite cover requirements like "income must by 2x monthly rent".
How does job hunting usually work? I've got a pretty robust skillset and a lot of experience, but I'm not sure how to look for jobs in an area I'm not physically located in.
Where are the good geek hangouts in Greensboro?
Delzhand on
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as for jobs, I'm not really sure. What are you skill sets and job experiences? if you have experience at a university you may want to considering working at UNC-Greensboro. Greensboro is a decently sized city and i suppose your ability to find a job depends on your skillset.
as for fun, I don't know about geek hangouts in greensboro but there's bound to be some nice gaming spots. you're also about a 2 hour drive from our lovely mountains if you're interested, and about 3 and half from some wonderful beaches. you're also an hour away from the triangle area and more importantly Chapel Hill, which is the nicest place in the world. You'll be arriving in the summer, and our summers can be sort of brutal to the uninitiated. if you do end up renting a house, make sure the air conditioning is in working order. The heat and humidity can be a bit much at times.
Why would you move to Ames to go to UofI? Cy doesn't like turncoats, you know.
Iowa State University is in Ames. University of Iowa is in Iowa City. It's a two hour drive to get from one to the other. Lived in both.
Delzhand, I've got a rather biased viewpoint. Iowa... is the last bastion of sanity this country has. I'd recommend staying. You don't want to be on the wrong side of the Mississippi or the Missouri when the country collapses.
As far as pay vs. getting approved for the apartment, its something you'll probably have to talk over with them. I would try to get a job there as quickly as possible. Showing them your previous pay stub while you were only working 15 hours will probably not really cut it.
As for North Carolina, if you like iced tea, when ordering at ANY restaurant, ask for 'unsweet iced tea'. Otherwise they will give you iced tea with about eight pounds of sugar in it.
Raleigh/Chapel Hill/Durham is a really nice area (with Durham being the not very nice area of it).
The most advice I can really give is to start calling ahead. Call apartments you are interested in and ask them what their policies are. I was fortunate and my gf (now wife) already lived out here, so she went around to apartments and got things lined up. The place I ended up in she got me more or less pre-approved, pending the landlord actually meeting me. When I arrived, I spent the night at her house, then we went to the apartment the next day, signed the papers, and I moved in.
Jobs are a bit of a bitch. Again, start calling. Hit up monster.com and dice.com and see what recruiters are working in the area and what companies are in the area. Then start calling and sending resumes. The recruiters won't do too much until you actually arrive if you're just looking at average entry to mid level jobs based on my experience, but having a few that you've already got a rapport with and who know when you're going to arrive and need work can be useful.
For another piece of advice, the route that mapquest gave me to make the drive was kind of stupid. It took me over to washingtond, D.C. and then south, which can have super nasty traffic and is not anything I'd want to deal with in a moving truck and/or pulling a trailer. I instead plotted my route in two steps based on advice from my parents and it went pretty smoothly. I first had a route south to St. Louis plotted out for me. Then from St. Louis I took I64 east until it merged with I95 (merges in Richmond) and took that south (gf was living on the NC/VA border at the time so I had to go way south from there). The trip is really easy and straightforward, there are only a couple of cities with nasty traffic and it still isn't as bad as risking D.C. traffic, and you get to see some nice sights going through the mountains in West Virginia.
Whoa, how did I fuck that up? We're graduating from Iowa State, not U of I.
Cy doesn't like turncoats is right. I grew up in Ames and became a Hawkeye.
To answer your apartment questions, you may want to call the agency to get all the information you need. UNC-G also has on-campus housing, but I'm not sure about specifics.
As for employment, the general area is kind of hurting in unemployment. I've heard that there are places that are hiring, but not much. I ditto the advice to look for on-campus jobs, since that may be your best bet. My workplace is hiring for some positions as well.
When you are doing your job hunting, just mention when you are planning on moving in August and put out feelers. When Vyolynce moved to NC from MA, his workplace FedExed him an application and all the paperwork he needed fill out and he moved down shortly before his start date. When my dad got another job in another state, he went ahead of us to get everything in order while Mom settled our affairs "back home" and then brought us over once everything was taken care of.
As for geek hangouts:
Vyolynce recently judged a 1K for a card shop owned by a friend of ours. Not sure where that was, but he can probably tell you.
There is a card shop located on High Point Road called Lucky's Card Shop. A nice group of people there, but not one I hang out at much.
There's also a gaming store in Burlington called Hypermind. I primarily go there to play Magic: the Gathering, but they also have tournaments for Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, etc. and have Board Game Night every Tuesday, along with a Magic draft on Wednesdays and Type II tournament on Friday.
There's also a comic shop in Burlington called Hero's Haven, but I'm not sure where that's located now since the owner had to move it again.
If you're into anime, comics or sci-fi, there's several conventions throughout the year in NC, ranging from small to large:
Ichibancon - January - Charlotte - Anime
What the Hell? Con - February - Greensboro (Guilford Tech) - General Geek Con
Stellarcon - March - High Point - Sci-fi
UNCC Spring JAMS Expo - April - Charlotte (UNC-Charlotte) - Anime (just started this year)
Animazement - May - Raleigh - Anime
Hero's Con - June - Charlotte - Comics
ConCarolinas - May/June - Charlotte - Sci-fi
Librari-con - September - Fayetteville - Anime
(Removes the tour guide hat.)
I'd like to add that Greensboro has Hobbytown USA that does Warhammer/40k and UNCG has it's Science Fiction/Fantasy group that meets on campus. wiki page
Also there is Acme Comics that is a comic book shop that's been around as long as I can remember. Acme Comics
I'd avoid Hero's Haven though, it constantly opens/closes and moves around.
As for Apartment hunting, are you and your wife looking at student apartments? If so, student apartment complexes generally have leases start around the beginning of the school year and end after school finishes. Those apartment complexes empty out after the end of the school year, but begin to fill up quickly as the new semester approaches. As others have said, it would be best to talk to the apartment management to see their individual policies about leasing.
My school holds an annual apartment hunting event for all the incoming grad students where people all come in from all over, check out some of the more popular apartment complexes, stay the night in a big block of hotels, and get to meet people. Maybe UNC-G has a similar program?
Also, welcome to the south--its hot here, but the food is great. At least once in your stay here, check out Lexington barbecue.
I'm sick of cold-ass Midwestern winters. I'd rather be hot than cold, so I'm fine with that.
NC barbecue is more vinegar based than mustard based.
Also if you were sampling NC barbecue and got chicken instead of pork, you did something wrong :P
We really felt like out of place northerners in Stamey's. We were the only people there without some combination of plaid, overalls, or ball caps.
I can't slam them too much, since the owners are friends of mine and are good guys. They're just too cheap to spring for a location that isn't owned by a douchebag or isn't a rathole. :P
Oh, yeah. Forgot about that one. Probably because it usually runs against Nekocon.
student apartments are full of students though.
I'm a student myself and I can we tend not to be the best neighbors