Limbo

Monday and Tuesday were pretty much what I expected: getting an ID badge, parking, touring the grounds, getting small amounts of work done, etc. Today all the weirdness hits home. I'm currently a contractor until I get my PhD and I can take the official federal job, so that's causing all sorts of delay in the sense that everything including the format of my email is based on this idea that I'm a 6 week contract employee instead of a real faculty member. Also, there are just other sorts of half states I'm dealing with. The computer that was in this office turned out to have a problem, so I'm using this older computer temporarily, which means I can't set it up how I like and I'm trying not to even save much to it -- it doesn't even have the latest version of IE or anything, so it really feels temporary. And finally, my office, while vastly cleaner than when I saw it during my interview, still has a ton of other people's leftover crap in it. I don't know when it's going away. I've moved the stuff I don't want over as much as possible so I have lots of empty shelves waiting for books and things, so that makes me feel better.

Finally, I seem to be at this weird social juncture in which orientation appears to be over but I'm not really feeling like I have all I need to move forward with things like my class (it would help if my Blackboard woudl get activated). Not that I don't have three conference presentations to prepare for next week, but still.