Sunday/Monday – Day 108/109
November 19, 2012
I honestly am trying to get back up to date so that my posts aren’t so anachronistic but with all the excitement at Penn, combined with the intense workload, I’m not sure how soon I’ll get there!
I wish I could’ve slept in today, but it just wasn’t possible, with a giant four person group project due. I had to build my own Operating System for Operating Systems (CIS380) and boy was it time-consuming. However, it was incredibly enjoyable, up to the point where some group members didn’t manage to pull their weight entirely (though this came later). I was up at 9AM meeting in my neighbors room to hack away at the project and managed to make a good amount of progress. This continued for a good number of hours. In fact, I managed to lose most of the day to it! The rest of the afternoon was uninteresting as I assembled various parts of other assignments into submittable work. Including plenty of hard work on physics.
Monday was slightly more successful as by now I’d had a little extra sleep. Finally a little recovery. Algorithms today was a breeze, given by a guest lecturer who didn’t exactly speak passable English. After that it was off to work again, this week I spent much of my spare time coding up the ‘scheduler’ for the ‘kernel’ of the operating system. I was pleased in the evening to finally get back to regular Glee rehearsals but to my disappointment, much of the rest of semester would be focused on holiday music, specifically carols. And, whilst I don’t mind the odd carol, learning twenty of them and singing them over and over doesn’t really fit what I really want to be doing. Also being Jewish, a few of them have lyrics that are a little awkward to sing, along the lines of “the king over Jews is born!”.
After rehearsal, it was the usual back to my room punctuated with a Glee interview (and for the life of me I can’t remember who I interviewed then, though I feel very guilty about it). Then it was to work for the usual, and the usual late night before sleep. Some of my life needs to be a little less exciting. Good for contrast.
Friday/Saturday – Day 106/107
November 18, 2012
The march of stress continues. I didn’t manage algorithms today and my singing lesson was cut short due to complete exhaustion. Though I’m equally as tired today while writing this, it’s for entirely separate reasons that I’ll get to later. Friday’s show ran well, nothing special there, and managed to get to shul and dinner as well.
Shabbat itself was somewhat more tiring with a Glee Club alumni reception alongside the shows. At least my now I was close to a few cast and crew members. I hardly managed to eat all day as too much was happening, and I know it wasn’t wise but in this case there were just too many issues. After the show finished late motzei Shabbat we began load-out/strike, clearing the set and packing up. This took a great many hours, and we were called from around eight PM to three AM. At three we had the cast party, however with all the work I was behind on from the last two weeks I couldn’t really partake part in it very fully and only stayed for a short while before heading to bed for what I hoped would be a good while.
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 104/Day 105
November 16, 2012
The slog continues. Today I made up the remainder of my workshop hours and unfortunately spilled a can of paint over my runners (sneakers), destroying them in the process. I managed to make it to algorithms this morning, but by this point the combination of coding, solving and singing was really taking its toll. Though my voice was slowly coming back, every day my eyes drooped a little more and I was a little less attentive in class.
Tonight’s rehearsal was much the same as the previous nights, though this time we entered into act two and I was even given a little more of a role with a cameo as the prison guard in a few scenes.
Thursday was the day of the show and, thankfully my voice was back. As I’m writing this a week later I admit that I can hardly remember the day, only to say nothing of note really occurred, the usual classes with a just in time submission of some physics work and more struggles with my code.
Finally tonight the show opened and, as per usual, I was running about like a mad man, performing transition and, occasionally delivering a few lines. However, the show also gave me the opportunity to bond a little more with the other cast and crew members, culminating in a pleasant dinner after the show in which I got to talk in depth to Lauren and Anais amongst others.
I needed my sleep tonight more than ever and thankfully, I received it!