The week ahead

There’s a lot happening this week, it SHOULD be the last week I’m technically jobless. Right now I’m not getting paid by anyone, not by the school, not by the hospital, basically I’m living off the last paycheck I got at the beginning of the month and the next one may not be here until close to the end of next month. If something happens and my start date gets pushed back, well that would mean that I would have no money for anything. That would be bad.

It’s a very stressful time for me. It feels like I say that a lot, but these next few weeks in particular are brutal. I’m just running out of time to finish everything, although most of it is done. I’m running out of time to start and until I do I’m just holding my breath hoping that I make the deadline. Plus I’m currently trying to get two papers in the final stages for (first) submission. Oh not to mention the computer problems, because of course I would have an expensive problem crop up the second I have no income (here).

So let’s look at what needs to happen this week. The good news is I have finished all the pre hiring documents. There were a lot and it took a few hours to get it all done, but here we are. Last week I needed to have my physical. Or at least what I thought was a physical. It turns out it was just a screening to make sure I got all my vaccines and what not. There was a blood draw, a TB test, some skin tests, vaccine history, etc.

Today I had the TB test read, negative thankfully (really don’t want TB) and I’ve sent in the final documents I needed to send off. All that remains is getting my badge taken care of, which should happen tomorrow or wednesday. At least, that’s the last step, or at least I THINK it’s the last step. Things keep popping up that I had no idea about so there’s still a little bit of confusion on my end. The confusion isn’t helping anything right now, but that’s probably my own fault.

The next few days are going to be complicated though. I have two appointments at the VA, both are prep for the next (yet another) possible surgery that needs to happen. So I need to get the rest of the hospital stuff done while working around those appointments. That’s hard to do because the VA really takes their sweet time so even though my appointment is scheduled for a particular time, it could be one or even two hours after the scheduled appointment. That’s why I’m trying to squeeze the badging process in between the two days of my appointments. Friday is out since I have my one class for the term, so it has to happen in the next day or two or it won’t be able to happen.

There’s still the issue of parking I’m trying to work out. The hospital I will be working at (and currently work at technically speaking) is located downtown. Parking is always an issue and they have several options for parking, which I’ve got the packet for. The packet says I can select one of the options when I do the onboarding stuff, but I did the onboarding stuff and they only offer the parking packet for the parking step so I’m very confused about how to actually acquire parking. I can park if needed, but it costs money and I really don’t want to have to pay if I can help it so I’m trying to get that situation figured out. Luckily even if it doesn’t happen before I start, I can still just pay for the first few days/week until it gets solved.

There’s still a lot of other stuff to get done as well. This list is mostly just about the onboarding process and not about the extra work I have. Like I mentioned, there are two papers I’m currently working on that need to get finished. One of which is (I feel) further along than the other, but it’s also a lot more complex. Today I have a meeting with my Co-PI to go over the paper and where we are. I just sent him some of the recent changes we made and there’s some concerns so we need to talk about what to do about it. I’m behind schedule on getting the paper done, but I think it will work out.

The other paper is mostly done and is being reviewed by my co-authors, that paper requires (not optional) my desktop computer, which as we know is currently limping along and can’t really be relied on at the moment. I’m hoping that the replacement parts will get here on time and I can get the stuff done before the reviewers send me back the suggestions they have. I’ve managed to get some of the visuals done to my main-PI’s approval, but I don’t think I could finish the rest of it without my computer fixed. I was trying to get some basic work done yesterday using it and it peaked at 72 degrees Celsius (above the max operating temp of the CPU), but I wasn’t doing anything super computationally heavy so the heat issue is getting worse fast. The poor thing was lagging bad, so I’m trying to avoid needing to use it until I can fix the problem. The parts as of now, aren’t scheduled to be here until the first of next month, so about two weeks. Here’s hoping that’s fast enough.

This week is mostly about balancing everything and hoping it works out. Next week is my current start date so once we cross that threshold I think I’ll feel a little better. Until then I’ve got a lot of things up in the air that I’m not sure about and just don’t know how I can fix any of it. As usual it looks like a hurry up and wait type of situation.