The reason

As graduation looms on the horizon, I've gotten a few more questions about what I plan to do after getting my degree. There have been some subtle hints from a couple full-timers here about staying (which I don't want to do), and I feel I can get out of that relatively easily by explaining that I've spent over 5 years in Boston and am ready to move to a different city.

Of course, the next question that comes up is the our-group-in-Houston one: "Do you want to go back to Houston? Hopefully we'll be staffing up a lot down there over the next year." Well, that gets a little trickier to decline. I may very well be interested in a position with my current employer in Houston several years from now, so I don't want to burn any bridges, but I'm not interested in moving back to Houston right away. Not sure yet how to decline that one gracefully.

Which brings up another question that I'm not quite ready to answer: "Are you going back to JSC after graduation?" That ranks right up there with, "How did you like working at JSC? What was it like as a civil servant?" Again, not sure how to give an honest answer on that one that fits into 25 words or fewer.

I'm planning to move to Washington, D.C. after I graduate. Even if I didn't have personal reasons for moving, I love the city and I'd like a chance to work in the defense sector of the aerospace industry. If, however, I were only making the decision based on the job I wanted, I would be considering a handful of areas around the country, not just D.C.

But there are personal reasons involved. I'm moving there to be with someone that I've been away from for the past year. To me, there comes a point in any long distance relationship in which one or both of you have to move to make things work, and I really want this to work, so I'm going to move.

Unfortunately, there's still a small part of me that doesn't like how that sounds. When I was in high school, I knew plenty of girls (mostly) who went to specific colleges only to follow their boyfriends, and halfway through freshman year they were miserable because the school didn't suit them and the relationship had ended. Even though I know in my heart that this is different, I still feel like other people will judge the situation this way when I tell them about it.

Is this crazy? It's not like I'm moving to D.C. to become a 1950's housewife. And maybe everyone else that I talk to, especially at work, will understand my reasoning, and it's just me who views it as a jaded high schooler. I guess I just never thought I would move across the country for a guy, and it's taking me a little while to get used to that. However, I also never thought the best part of my life would be 1,800 miles away, so maybe I should just throw my high school brain out the window.

(Yes, I realize I'm breaking all the blogging topic rules - work, love life, etc. Too bad.)