In 2 weeks I'm leaving Pittsburgh after living here for 3 years!!!
I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. Is it the right move? Yeah, I think so. I want to be closer to my family before I move to who knows where for my PhD (if that even happens!).
Pittsburgh is a really cool city. There's a lot of diversity -an absolute metric fuck tone of coffee/boba/matcha places. I've taken 14 million rides on the 61A/B bus, which I feel a strange fondness for.
Idk, I know I'll miss it. It houses my time as a graduate student. I've met some wonderful people here. God, yeah, that's the hardest part. The people! I love my friends. I love my PI. I love my masters advisor. I love my fieldwork team.
I love walking through Oakland and seeing the Cathedral of Learning (known affectionately as Cathy). Tall, piercing the sky, visible from pretty much anywhere in the city. I have SO many pictures of her. I'll add some below.
My ex BF would scoff at Pittsburgh fairly frequently, talking about how "boring and mundane is it". He wants to leave ASAP. He said that there's nothing to look at. I never vocalized this to him, but I ardently disagree. The Carnegie Library/museums? The zoo? The aviary? The Frick? The beautiful view of the two rivers converging seen from the incline? The kids setting up their hammocks on the lawn to read? The picnics? Pickleball? Studying at the School of Public Health or Scaife? Frick Park? Schenley Park? I could go on and on and on
If you can, please visit Pittsburgh. It's special. Yeah, the winters are brutal and summers sweltering. Yeah, we have a lot of lantern flies, but I think it all adds to the charm.
I'll miss it here