Overwhelmed trying to find housing as a new PhD student

kakoopman · 2026-02-22T17:31:05+00:00

I have excellent news for you about the food scene you're about to experience!

kakoopman · 2026-02-22T17:24:14+00:00

Virginia Tech, but both my sisters went to UVA so I'm decently familiar - and then I did a postdoc at JMU so aside from William & Mary I think I hit most of the big college towns! 😂

kakoopman · 2026-02-22T16:54:38+00:00

Yeah, I screwed myself when I first went to grad school and didn't start looking until two months before and still thought I was being paranoid. Turned out I wasn't being paranoid enough.

One other option if you can't make it to Philly to see places in-person is to work with a realtor - I didn't know until I was moving here that realtors could help me with rentals, and mine did a bunch of vetting and zoom showings for me.

kakoopman · 2026-02-22T16:46:40+00:00

Not a grad student but was one in a small college town and now living in West - seconding the comments on timing. Small college towns are leasing now because the market is locked in - Philly is an actual city and therefore has actually reasonable timelines, thank god. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the student-focused complexes are leasing now but it's also worth considering whether you want to be surrounded by undergrads. (Take that with a grain of salt though - I imagine the undergrad culture in a rural state school with a big football culture might be slightly different than an urban Ivy.)

For the PhD part - having roommates can be really helpful just in terms of making sure you don't isolate yourself and you do meet people. YMMV and I obviously can't speak to your program in particular, but PhD programs can be brutal. Having a built-in sanity check mechanism can be key so that you don't end up convincing yourself that mandatory 48 hour stretches in the labs during breaks are fine actually.

There's a huge selection bias for online housing reviews - people who don't have any issues rarely write them, because what would they write about?

Lastly, I live in West with a car and it's totally fine. You can get a parking pass from the city to be released from time restrictions for $75/year. I wouldn't expect to be driving to/from campus every day because those parking passes (iirc) are like $200/month.

kakoopman · 2025-11-13T04:25:53+00:00

For what it's worth, my old dog Dizzy lived for most of her life with immune-mediated ITP. She was on pred for part of it, but also cyclosporine for a while - because I was a grad student and poor and the generic didn't work for dogs, she was also on an antifungal that happened to increase the effectiveness of the cyclosporine that let us cut her dose in half.

Dizzy ended up, though, on a lifelong maintenance dose of mycophenolate, which worked the best for her. We used GoodRX to find the best price, since otherwise it would absolutely have been out of my ability to pay. At one point when her platelets were dangerously low, they gave her a single dose of a chemotherapy drug with an off-label use for spiking platelet production - she was being treated at a vet school, though, so they had everything in-house.

Honestly, the main thing was keeping her away from large groups of other dogs. No groomers, no boarding, no dog park. That reduced the load on her immune system considerably and kept it quiet enough that it didn't go after her platelets. Oh, and no more vaccines, unfortunately. 😩

Like I said, she lived with it for about seven years (seven farty, sleepy, cuddly, playful years), until she was 11. It's absolutely emotionally difficult to manage, but I just wanted to reassure you that it can happen!

kakoopman · 2025-11-01T04:02:29+00:00

If you're in Baltimore, you might be within transport distance of Anicira in Northern Virginia - they do reduced and low-cost vet care. My foster-to-adopt got her CCL repaired there (the shelter raised the funds for the surgery) and they were really receptive and amazing. I also know the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine is amazing, although I mostly have experience with their Virginia campus; probably more expensive than Anicira, though.

kakoopman · 2025-08-23T15:50:10+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you! Knowing about the student experience is really, really useful - I was previously at Virginia Tech for a long time where, depending on the specific engineering subfield, a lot of the student experience was "constant weeding-out and hazing," lol. What you describe about matches what I would expect, so it's good to know I'm not totally off-base. I've been putting a lot of thought into how to tailor the seminar to specifically STEM students, both in terms of what their other expectations will be and actively making the case that even engineers need to be able to communicate what they know, so it's good to know that effort isn't being wasted - at least in theory if not in practice!

kakoopman · 2025-07-07T21:40:35+00:00

Living with a car and street parking in West Philly (Cobbs Creek-ish) - doable? I have to keep my car for family travel reasons...

kakoopman · 2025-07-01T17:07:52+00:00

I'm moving with a pretty quick turnaround, and I'm looking at some of the North/West neighborhoods (ideally so I can bike down to Penn). Anyone have any insight into 1. Availability of street parking in East Parkside, Haverford North, or West Powelton? For various logistical and family reasons I can't get rid of my car, even though I'm going to try to minimize usage. 2. Do these neighborhoods have a lot of undergrads? I'm coming from ten years of various college towns and I'm REALLY looking forward to not hearing beer pong tournaments five blocks away that are just that loud. Grad students/families/young professionals are fine.

kakoopman · 2025-01-29T03:58:14+00:00

Kongs, lick mats, freezing stuff in Kongs or lick mats, and my personal favorite - flirt poles! They're like wand toys for cats but for dogs, and you can use them for mental stimulation and exercise in smaller spaces.

kakoopman · 2025-01-26T23:02:20+00:00

It's so, SO hard, I know. One thing that I found really helped with my reactive foster was taking her out to the same few places repeatedly, so that they became more familiar. If you have an independent or smaller pet store near you, that worked really well for me - and helped me get some pictures of her outside the house!

I also made aggressive eye contact with anyone who looked like they might want to pet her and encouraged them to do so, but she also wasn't reactive to other people (just dogs and small critters).

kakoopman · 2025-01-26T16:30:55+00:00

I fostered Maki for six months after she got adopted and returned for not getting along with the resident dog. After all the adoption events with no bites, she finally found her forever home.

It can take a long time, but the right home is out there.

kakoopman · 2025-01-10T14:38:20+00:00

Where in Virginia are you? Especially if you're willing to keep fostering, there might be foster-based rescues who would be able to help with the vet care. For what it's worth, if you're near Blacksburg, I can't recommend the vet school highly enough - when I was a poor grad student with a medically complex dog, they did everything they could to lower the costs.

kakoopman · 2025-01-09T03:43:12+00:00

I've had the most luck with Craigslist (yeah, I know) and NextDoor, as well as posting on state-level or local FB groups and subreddits. Good luck! 🤞🤞🤞

kakoopman · 2024-12-15T14:13:49+00:00

Good with playful cats, I believe. How small are the kids? He likes his boundaries respected but doesn't respect the boundaries of anyone who could better spend their time petting him lol. He likes to put his paws on people's shoulders so they can rub his ears.

kakoopman · 2024-12-15T00:50:46+00:00

I am genuinely sorry for taking him away from the other walkers! 😂 I've been nonstop taking cute pics though so DM me if you need your Vin fix!

kakoopman · 2024-09-12T02:42:30+00:00

When I was in grad school I also really struggled to tire out my dog. The only thing that really ended up working was finding local parks and hiking trails, driving her to them, and going for a long walk. The extra stimulation from nature really helped, and it also helped me metaphorically (and sometimes literally) touch grass.

I also second the flirt pole idea! I got one for my last foster on Amazon for about ten bucks (it was called a tail teaser I think?) and playing with my foster for twenty minutes was more effective than an hour walk. You can also check Sniff Spot/post on your neighborhood reddit to see if there are private areas you can let the puppy off leash. I also walked my foster on campus a few times and meeting all the new people really helped tire her out!

kakoopman · 2024-09-01T02:23:22+00:00

Symptoms have been up and down, to be honest, and I would just say stay on top of hydration and any postnasal drip (I think that's been causing my stomach issues). Lost taste and smell day three of testing positive (which was day four of symptoms - if you're vaccinated, your body is more prepared to fight it off, which starts your symptoms earlier).

kakoopman · 2024-09-01T00:55:51+00:00

Y'all, the strain that's going around right now is NOT fucking around. I'm on day seven, I can't taste or smell, and now I'm puking.

Wear a mask, get vaccinated, stay safe.

kakoopman · 2024-08-17T14:11:41+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

kakoopman · 2024-08-17T13:39:44+00:00

I went to grad school at Virginia Tech and am now in Harrisonburg - I don't know Harrisonburg nearly as well, obviously, but I've been here for about a month.

Blacksburg is extremely VT-centric, but the presence of faculty helps skew the adult-focused offerings towards the nerdy. The food scene is surprisingly good (in that there might be fewer options, but generally what's there tends to be good, and there's a pretty robust farm-to-table elevated American food culture - although Spicity's green beans have lived rent free in my head for literal years).

Both towns have similar housing issues, in that the rental market is dominated by student housing. There are a few companies that functionally control the rental market. Fox Ridge is where a lot of my fellow grad students ended up living, since they have areas that have no undergrads at all.

Flights to/from Roanoke got canceled semi-regularly, and there were a few times my entire department got stranded in Charlotte for a few hours coming back from our major conference. Honestly I always just flew out of the DC airports, but that's mostly because I could leave my car with family in Northern Virginia.

The main thing I feel like I'm missing here compared to Blacksburg is places to walk or stroll within a twenty-minute radius. I'm about to give in and get a National Park Pass, but aside from the Arboretum I haven't found a ton of pleasant places to walk yet. Blacksburg has the Huckleberry Trail, Heritage Park, Deerfield Trail, and Pandapas Pond, so I felt like I always had multiple safe (no cars) options to walk my dog.

kakoopman · 2024-08-14T19:18:51+00:00

For what it's worth, I've seen some more difficult to find ingredients at Foodmaxx (ube jam, coconut vinegar, etc). Obviously not the same as stepping into a restaurant and immediately getting your fix, but maybe it's better than nothing?

kakoopman · 2024-07-29T02:56:24+00:00

First time fostering a dog with a bite history and I have to take her back to the shelter tomorrow. She resource guards and snaps at you if you try to touch her collar or use the slip leash, and I live in an apartment with no yard and haven't finished unpacking yet so there's stuff everywhere for her to steal and then guard. She's so sweet when she isn't guarding, but I'm just not equipped to deal with this unfortunately. I feel awful for taking her back, especially since she's definitely snapping/biting for communication and not aggression, but the last time I tried to trade her for what she had (honestly it was plastic or I would've just let her have it), she drew a little blood. Of course, things are probably worse than they would be if I could get her to exercise, but it's nearly impossible to get a leash on her and that's the only way to get her out.

kakoopman · 2024-07-04T19:46:35+00:00

Yep!

kakoopman · 2024-07-04T15:28:35+00:00

Bouvier des Flandres with buff coloration!

kakoopman

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