mousme | Entries tagged with university

I finally got the Basement of Horrible Cat Pee professionally clean. It's now looking horrific but smelling a million times better. It also cost a bloody fortune, and I am... well, not exactly broke, but definitely back to paycheck to paycheck, juggling bill payments, and constantly worried something, somewhere, is going to bounce and send me into a spiral of late fees. Part of this is justified, and part of this is just my usual hang-ups about money. I should have some overtime payments coming in in about a month or six weeks, so if I just hang on until then, things should get a little less tight, budget-wise.

To be fair, I have been doing some unwise spending, especially when it comes to groceries, of all things. I've been feeling more than a little overwhelmed with everything, and that tends to make me go for convenience, rather than the stuff that would take me time and energy to cook, and unfortunately convenience around here costs about twice as much as I would normally pay to feed myself.

I'm really enjoying my Master's level courses so far. I have good professors, and both the readings and the course material are super interesting. I really hope I'm able to keep up and do reasonably well. I need to have a good GPA in order to be allowed to write a Master's thesis, otherwise I'll have to produce a smaller, directed study, and take a lot more courses, which I'd rather not do (although the unstructured aspect of writing a thesis is pretty terrifying to me, the queen of procrastination).

Anyway, I am sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul these days in the sleep department. I'm trying to get all my mediation courses done before Christmas so I can start to get actual experience under my belt, but I only have so much time I can take off work, so I'm having to go to class directly after my night shifts, which is... suboptimal to say the least. I don't seem to have much choice in the matter, though: we're so short-staffed that my work is threatening to cancel the leave I've already requested (they refuse to authorize overtime to cover university courses, which is actually bullshit because they're not really entitled to know why I'm taking leave), which would mean I can't go to class and would automatically fail my semester, thus flushing $3,500 I can't afford down the drain.

So to say this is all causing a great deal of anxiety would be putting it mildly. I've requested an appointment to see my doctor, but the earliest I could get was October 2nd, and even then I'm pretty sure she can't medicate my management out of existence.

In the meantime, Canada has declared elections, things are in full swing, and I want to crawl under a rock and die. We're ten days in, and we've got another month of this bullshit. I am pretty sure we're in for a Conservative minority in the government, and while the previous Conservative government was not my favourite, the current Conservative party have leaned considerably more to the right, and are actively anti-LGBTQ+ and are likely to re-open what they call the "abortion debate." So, you know, if they get elected, and God forbid, with a majority, we can all kiss our freedoms goodbye. People are saying it can't happen, but several provinces, including my own, have voted in some pretty horrifying right wing governments in the past couple of years.

I really hope Canada doesn't turn into a mini trash fire version of the USA's dumpster fire, but I guess we'll find out on October 21st. *siiiiiiiiiigh*

There's more, but I am looking at the time, and I really need to nap before my night shift. See above: getting enough sleep. If work is reasonably calm tonight, I may post again later, while I still have the motivation.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://mousme.livejournal.com/1236183.html

My kingdom for better organizational skills.

Peggy is growing like a weed with teeth. She is still ridiculously adorable. We experimented with puppy daycare, and unsurprisingly she LOVED it, but alas came home with a case of Bordetella (kennel cough). Luckily she's vaccinated for it, which has made it a very mild case, even though it didn't protect her entirely. She's had it for just over a week, but she seems 90% better today, so I am hopeful she will be all better in another day or so. She's been bored out of her skull staying home and resting, and a bored puppy is a puppy that gets into mischief, moreso than she usually does.

( Peggy picspam below the cut )
The rest of my life has been a lot less adorable (although Peggy more than makes up for it). Work is a shitshow. We are incredibly short-staffed, and we are hemorrhaging people, because our management is terrible. I and at least four other people are looking for work elsewhere (some more actively than others). I can't really actively look for work in mediation until I take four courses in Third Party Neutral mediation. I wanted to take them this summer and ran out of money, and NOW the damned Canadian Institute for Conflict Resolution is stubbornly offering every course EXCEPT the first one, so I can't even start. Argh. I will also need to have a certain number of mediations under my belt, but I plan on volunteering at the Ottawa community mediation centre and hope that will count.

( Complaining about work under the cut )

Anyway, enough complaining about work. Apart from that, things are going just fine. It's just that work is a huge part of my life, and therefore occupies a lot of my thoughts. I try to leave work at work, but that hasn't been happening in the past few weeks, which is in and of itself a red flag.

The next thing I have to do is figure out how the hell to pay my tuition, because it's $1,500 more than what I budgeted for due to the fact that SURPRISE! full-time students get charged for a bunch of things I don't need, like a transit pass and insurance. I have a car, and I have insurance through work. I am going to see if I can get those knocked off my bill, because holy Hannah that is a lot of money.

I will be back with more Peggy updates soon, I hope! In the meantime, she is back in her crate with her lunch, because she was getting very barky with the cat and, bless her, she is incredibly shrill. So she gets to have a time out with some toys and her kibble and some treats, not that she views it that way. This way, though, we all get a break: her, the cats, and most importantly, me.

Current Mood: cynical
Crossposts: https://mousme.livejournal.com/1235229.html

Peggy is learning how to break out of Puppy Jail, aka her crate. She has done it twice now, including today when I was trying to nap. Then she peed on the bedroom carpet out of excitement. >_< It's a process. The house training is still a lot more miss than hit these days.

Otherwise, she continues to both be adorable AND dance on my last nerve, bless her. I've been trying to write this entry for a whole hour, if that gives you any indication of how much trouble she gets into on a regular basis. :P I have introduced her to ice cubes, and I may have created a monster. She looooooves ice cubes, but she keeps losing them under the fridge. At this rate I may end up with an ice cube-induced flood. I'm almost done with my summer class (just over a week to go!), and then all I will have to do until September is regular work. After that, I start my Masters degree. Here's hoping it goes as well as my first year back at university, or at least that it's not so hard I fail right out.

I have an OSAP update waiting for me (that's student financial aid in Ontario) and I should really just go in and check it, but I've been putting it off all day because I'm worried I'll get refused again. I could really use the grant, and maybe even some of the loan in there. Right now affording university is dicey at best. Okay, never mind, I decided to go check, and I've been approved, so YAY! I won't get the money before after tuition is due, alas, but I can scrape by, I'm pretty sure of it.

I am dithering about the loan. Currently I actually have a fair bit of debt (by my standards, anyway), and I could use this loan to clear a huge chunk of the debt off my line of credit. The student loan is at a lower interest than the line of credit (2.5% vs 5%), and I have a grace period to repay it until after my degree is completed. So I'd have debt, but a different kind of debt, and if I am more careful with my money (I've been sort of careful, but not careful enough), then I could be entirely debt-free in not too long, which is not shabby at all, really. But it's a Big Decision, and I have never been good with those, so I guess more pondering is in order.

I should get going. I have a D&D game tonight, which I get to play live on Twitch! It's been a pretty fun game so far. I've been playing a Kenku (a bird person, basically) who, instead of going with the usual crow stereotype, looks like a budgie. Her name is Coco, and she's so much fun to play, because Kenku don't have their own language, they can only mimic what they hear, so I've been having a great time trying to communicate with a combination of gestures and repeating phrases others have said (I am keeping a running list in a Notepad document). Coco is a rogue, and since she does quite a lot of damage with her sneak attacks, we've all nicknamed her Murder!Birb. XD

See you on the flip side, everyone!