Sunday/Monday – 180/181
January 29, 2013
Sunday I was up bright and early, despite a late night of coding, to go work with Charu Jangid, a friend from my Networking graduate course. We spent a number of hours together, hacking away on some basic socket coding (networking stuff) and when it got to 2PM we decided it was getting late and that we had better stop for some modicum of food. Lunch was nice and we finally got around to chatting about a few things other than computer science. Following that we both when to our respective dorms and I worked inefficiently on both Physics and preparation for my lab the next day. Rehearsal at 5 took a lot of my remaining energy and so I was pretty tired when it came to dinner and learning at Hillel. Read a few nice thoughts on Purim while studying there and then worked till the early hours of the morning to get my Physics done.
Monday morning was another bright and early start, with a Physics tutorial starting at 9AM. After that I went to office hours with a few professors to help get a handle on some work. I planned my lab and worked out how I was going to run it. What was nice was the company as I was surrounded by fellow TAs and this gave me a chance to get to know them at least a little better whilst working. My classes almost put me to sleep this afternoon. Thankfully I had my recitation to wake me up. The snack roster worked as planned and a game of memory at the start helped to engender a sense of community amongst the class. From there we divided up into teams to work on generating accurate solutions to the lab problems with prizes for the best team. In my opinion other than a few breaks in my coherence during the proof sections, the lab went well.
Monday night meant Glee rehearsal, and though I was late, I still managed to gain plenty out of it. Following rehearsal I received some bad news via email, and a few of my summer plans were shot down, however I knew that any disappointment would be short lived. Dinner was a quick stop off at Hillel and then off to learn more of the Brahms requiem. Rehearsal was ok, though I was exhausted at this point and so my sight reading was a little off. The one saving grace for my evening was my time with Steph Li who amusingly and much to my excitement was now roommates with Alba Braso, a wonderful exchange student from Barcelona. So over the next forty minutes I had a chance to feel a little better by chatting to those two before returning to my room to work that late physics night again.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 178/179
Friday with no classes was a treat. However, that’s not to say I was unoccupied! First thing in the morning I had a meeting with the lovely Miss Amy Miller, my academic adviser. She helped me out a great deal in trying to figure out what I was doing and where I was going and aside from that provided me a bit of an insider view into quite how Penn worked.
The rest of the afternoon was spent meeting with Professors and working on various things, a long lunch at Hillel and then TA training and our meeting. In addition to all that I managed to squeeze in the time to make a salad for a shabbat dinner I was hosting with two friends, Michal and Ben. My only issue was a lack of invited guests. Luckily enough, lunch at Hillel provided me with the opportunity to invite a new friend, Safi Aharoni to dinner.
Friday night came and service was pretty lovely. It was good to be able to unload at the end of the week and just chill! Dinner however was absolutely wonderful. The conversation was spirited, the food excellent and this made for an overall great experience. The next day I attended the ‘sleep service’ till around midday and from there went to lunch at Aviva’s and Michal’s room. This was again a fantastic meal and made this Shabbat one of my favourites since leaving the country. I then hung around with Aviva till late afternoon when we all headed back to Hillel for a few activities before the end of Shabbat.
Following Shabbat, I raced back to my room, procrastinated for a while and, then got on to some work for the rest of the night.
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday – Day 175/176/177
January 28, 2013
I’m finding a lot of my time now goes towards preparing for my teaching and similar duties. Much of Tuesday was spent working on solving various problems for students, fixing up the homework and holding my office hours. My hours were in fact quite enjoyable and gave me a chance to get to know a few of my fellow TAs a little better (@Dennis, @Harmony, @Pulak). As per usual I had the dreaded physics lecture. Things had ramped up so quickly with me barely noticing that by this time I was flying fast enough that my wings had started smoking. Tuesday night I had barely enough time to eat before heading off to Glee rehearsal where we examined the result of the full club survey. Turns out everyone is pretty happy the way things are.
Wednesday was another chock full day and after staying up so late to work the night before, I only just woke up in time to get ready for my midday class. My classes were not particularly challenging, it was more the workload that was getting to me. The dreaded sleep deprived demon was rising from the Penn purgatorial pits, and was quickly consuming my remaining wits. After class I had a quick chance for a break, before heading back into rehearsal (as always) and then to more office hours!
Thursday challenged me again in terms of time management but I found a little more freedom with only one class in the morning. Most of my afternoon was spent arranging various things, starting to get my room together and running about from place to place. I had a meeting with the graduate chair to discuss future options for study in the field of computer science, particularly looking at Penn as an option. It seems I may have some large decisions in my future. Thursday night I spent in ‘shop hours’, assisting in the construction of the Spring Show set by painting for a few hours and chatting to Jon Ferrari, a Glee oldman who was one of the few I had yet to interview. Finally, my school week came to an end, as Friday I was to have no classes.