The biggest change from the city to State College is my living options. Hate to say it, but if you want to live in Manhattan proper, there’s not much available that’s safe and actually livable (no bathtubs in the kitchen, etc) for under $1000/month. At PSU, for $500 you could get a semi-nice room in a downtown apartment close to campus, a studio a bit farther away, or your own room in a house nearby.

I elected to go for even farther away (a whole 5 minute drive away from the PSU commuter parking lots) and live at Toftrees. Found my room through Craigslist, and am currently living with another 20something grad student. Check out the floor plan to the left, and you can even go to the Toftrees website and play around with furnishings online. I’m in the smaller bedroom (comparatively, it’s about 4x bigger than my bedroom in NYC), and pay less than 1/2 of what I was paying.

Now on to decorating! Need to buy a desk and figure out which pictures I’d like to hang.