Hi guys. I'm in my first systems engineer/admin role, moving up from help desk, on an 8 month contract two months ago. Dept budgeting was done up and was informed that my contract will not be extended nor will I be brought on as an FTE. So basically, there are 6 months more at this company.

I'm running the backup component of the IT storage and am the escalation point for the help desk. After the new year, I'll be migrating the environment from backup to tape/disk onto a backup to cloud environment. I also am creating powershell scripts for mass deletions and migrations into a new AD environment as well as other tasks. My mgr is supporting me in this endeavor and wants me to learn powershell on the clock when possible so I've got some EDX courses that are being taken right now and will continue to be. Later on after the holiday break, I'll be watching and helping, then doing, virtual server 2012 R2 builds to get practice and experience putting servers online in a prod environment. I wrote my first GPO two weeks after getting here and it was a successful deployment, but doing more is also something critical to expound upon.

What else could I utilize my time for in this role to ensure an upwards progression of skills and knowledge?