Brillotad

Man I don't envy being in that position. I would guess it's nice to have your family live settled to some extent while in school, but the time management of being a husband and father while juggling everything else seems borderline impossible to me. I know it cost me a relationship staying dedicated to school and it was certainly a challenge keeping it going as long as I did. I would guess one benefit would be that your time management has to be pretty tight to handle all that, which could be helpful managing your time when all is said and done. Great post & thanks for sharing your insight.

It's definitely not cheap, especially if you're going long distance/cross country, but I was pretty happy with the company I used when I moved away for school, Three Men & A Truck. It took some time to find one that was at a price I was comfortable with and I didn't move with a ton of stuff obviously, but I feel like it was worth it in the end. It certainly beat driving a truck myself for several days, eating out, staying in hotels, etc. Most of them give you an estimate for free, so you can "play the field" to some extent and fish around for a cheaper option, but I'd caution to be careful about shady companies, which there seem to be a lot of in the moving industry.

Doesn't seem unreasonable to me, but I might elaborate a little more so that it doesn't come across as terse or snippy. Time conflicts happen and they should understand that much at least. I agree with Decaf that you'd be better suited by explaining how you're unable to do it, instead of unwilling to.

I didn't necessarily give up anything wholesale, but I definitely had to cut back on social activities, exercise, and sleep at times. I think it's important to try and keep some semblance of balance in life, at least to the extent you can while in grad school.

This is a really good point. Being a TA can be really time consuming if you let it and make it difficult to focus on everything else, not to mention that there's not real reward for being excellent at it.