A busy schedule

As April is nearing the end, I'm starting to look forward into May, and things are looking astoundingly mediocre.  


In terms of work, my failing experiment as a professor will be over on May 3rd, not including the time it will take me to grade final papers and respond to students complaining about their grades.  Sadly this will not increase my free time, because the pregnant girl at work is quitting at the end of April, and our already short staff will have to pick up the slack.  This means instead of covering two extra shifts a week the three part time employees will have to cover extra shifts five days a week.  Also, another full time employee has apparently decided that she can take time off anytime she wants.  Instead of not letting her take the time off, our fearsomely bad manager simply makes us cover her shifts too.


On the other hand, I have taken almost every weekend off in May.  One of my best friends is coming to visit, and I thought she would rather not sit alone from 1-11:30pm two of the three days she is in town.  My second weekend off I am hosting a bridal shower and bachelorette for a soon-to-be married friend.  While I should be overjoyed to share in her bridal bliss, I am also nervous about hosting the forty-five people on her guest list.  Does it make me a bad maid of honor to hope that most of them send regrets?


Memorial Day weekend, I have been commanded to attend my family's reunion, held in the middle of nowhere five hours away from where I live.  While some people might say I was invited, my mother's "you WILL be there because you're moving away and never coming back" didn't really seem to be a polite invitational tone.


Basically the gist is that I will be working pretty much every day in May, but most of my shifts are about three hours long, right in the middle of the day.  On the days I actually have good earning potential I am otherwise occupied.  Awesome.

Can we just talk please?

I hate when I call boyfriend when I don't feel well.  Perhaps it is that I am not contributing much to the conversation, but it always seems like these calls have endless breaks in conversation.  I called because I wanted you to tell me about your day, not because I wanted to sit with the phone against my ear feeling like crap and hearing nothing.  I always end up feeling worse than I did before calling.

Can't we move together?

Last night I had trouble falling asleep because of my anxiety and that fact that my anxiety medication and I have not been in the same state for several days due to an error in packing. I started thinking about the logistics of moving this summer and freaked out.


Boyfriend has a job through the end of July, and needs to stay in our current place until around the first week of August.  Orientation for school starts the second week of August, and I would like to be moved in and settled by then.  We had discussed me moving in early July so that I could get the apartment set up and adjust to the new location before I started school.


As I started thinking about it, I realized that it is not going to work out.  I would be willing to sleep on an air mattress and go without most of my stuff until he moves so that he can keep using things.  However, it would defeat the purpose of me moving early to get the apartment ready if all of my belongings were still in at the old place.  I also can't ask him to go without a bed and other essential furniture and kitchen items for a month when he'll be doing 40+ hours of physical labor a week.  Another option would be to hire a moving company twice, but this move is already going to cost upwards of six thousand which will be totally paid for by student loans. 


I also started freaking out about my poor kitten and how he will be moved.  The easiest would probably be to fly him, so that he'll only be crated for about four hours instead of over 24 hours.  I also think that I will go crazy if listen to his crying for the entire trip by car.  In the logical side of my head I know that everything will work out just fine.  Unfortunately, the medicine deprived part is overpowering the logical and making me seriously freak out.

Dear Students,

I no longer wish to read and grade what you are passing off as papers for my class.  I did not realize I had to tell college students that they cannot cite the dictionary or SparkNotes as a source, silly me.

New York vs. Iowa.

Friday mornings I usually sleep in.  Last Friday, I woke up early because my phone was ringing.  Columbia was calling and they want me at their medical school.  

Of course I am super pumped about getting into my dream school.  I've wanted to go to Columbia since I was in high school.  However, now all the doubt is creeping in.  I'm getting worried about making such a huge environmental change.  I'm nervous about the high cost of living and the resultant debt.  I'm sad that I'll only get to see my family once or twice a year.  I'm also scared of making the wrong choice.

Both Iowa and Columbia have re-visit days in April.  Hopefully that will help either reinforce the fact that I want to be at Columbia or make me realize that I don't. 

At the moment, I wish boyfriend would stop being such a nice guy and just tell me where we should go. 

No you cannot cite Wikipedia

 After a week of being sick and lots of travel I am almost done grading the first paper for my class, and the future does not look good.  One of my students cited about.com, while another cited wikipedia.  I know that these are freshmen, but still.  It makes me enormously depressed that the university I graduated from has such low standards for admission.


It also makes me sad that I am still not being paid for teaching.  Apparently the hospital still has not changed my FTE status from 0.5 to 0.25, so I cannot officially be hired at 0.3 for the teaching job without getting benefits, and neither of my part times jobs can offer me benefits.  Because I am not in the system as working for the university as a professor, I cannot receive a paycheck and my bank account is extraordinarily sad.  I do not foresee getting a paycheck from the University until I quit my job at the hospital, which, ironically I cannot afford to do because teaching does not pay enough. 


Did I mention that I cannot wait to move?  I am super excited because I should find out where I will end up next year in the next few weeks.  Scenario 1 has me getting into Columbia and figuring out how boyfriend and I will be able to afford Manhattan and tuition and fees at a private school.  Scenario 2 has me either not getting into Columbia or deciding that the debt isn't worth it, and boyfriend and I move to Iowa.  Both of these options are great, and as of July (scenario 1) or the end of May (scenario 2) I get to start the next chapter in my life.  

And it is February

This week was boyfriend's 30th birthday.  It is also a week I spent on the couch with a fever.  Fever dreams are quite interesting.  In one, my doctor friend and I were taking a girl we haven't talked to since middle school to the hospital because she was in labor.  Odd. 


Tomorrow boyfriend and I leave for Kansas to go camping.  I'm looking forward to hot cocoa and toasted marshmallows by the lake.  Yay.


The only downside of this weekend is that I haven't finished my grading yet because I've been sick.  I suppose my students will just have to wait.