Shabbat/Sunday – Day 229/230
March 21, 2013
Regular late wakeup today, then a less than thrilling lunch. Guess I needed some time after such an exciting past few days to settle myself. However, the late afternoon and evening held a little more thrill in it as this evening marked our joint concert with the Harvard Glee Club! We rehearsed for a few hours, first together and then separately (meanwhile I was starving having missed my meal opportunity at Hillel) and then it was time for our gig. The crowd size wasn’t all that impressive, however given the Harvard Glee Club’s strictly classical repertoire, the appeal of the show was less broad. A highlight of this particular performance was our rendition of Biebl’s ‘Ave Maria’, which ended in a strong and resounding major chord, that rung through the Hall of Flags, despite the less than stellar acoustics of the venue.
The Harvard Glee Club had neglected to bring less formal attire, and so we dressed up in our ties and tails to match them.
Sunday was quieter again, but a full day of work. Much fuller than I would’ve liked and as a result I needed to schedule for myself every hour. I didn’t manage to keep to the schedule entirely (the physics fell by the wayside), despite my meticulous planning. Too many CIS121 crises.
Thursday/Friday – Day 227/228
March 20, 2013
Thursday was packed full again! More interviews, more office hours, more project work and more of pretty much everything but Glee Club. I guess we needed at least a little break after the previous night. My tech interview today was with a firm called Palantir and ultimately unsuccessful. I was a little frustrated as I felt they had misplaced me during team evaluation, where they decided I’d be best of interviewing for the front end and design team, really not my speciality. Regardless the interview went ok, the interviewers were friendly but perhaps ultimately not the best fit for me. Thankfully, I still have a few more lines in the ocean. Finally, a huge surprise for Thursday came in the form of a meeting with a Professor I’d been trying to chasing up for around a month.
Prof. Matt Blaze, a somewhat colourful character, with an interest in computer security, had a well deserved reputation for being hard to track down. However, it was certainly worth the effort to do so. After a thorough grilling on my background, my knowledge and ideas and more importantly, my passion and my ability to innovate a spark seemed to leap into his eye.
“So tell me,” he relaxed back into his chair, “what do we have to do to get you to study your PhD here?”
I was somewhat shocked, as my intention in meeting him was to more scope out the field of Professors and Penn and find people working in my area of interest. And here was a potential supervisor!
“I want you to move in to my lab,” he continued and proceeded to give me the PIN code to the door, “and, when someone asks you what you are working on, you are to feel guilty until you have a good answer”.
Friday with no classes, I allowed myself a little sleep in. Then it was to my new office to settle in. I felt a little awkward and out of place, but hopefully over time, I’ll find my niche there. I’m still very uncertain about the whole PhD thing, and Philly is a long way away from home to go for five to six years!
The afternoon was a series of meetings again, first the TA meeting in which Val (our Professor) took some length to describe my potential as a PhD student, much to my embarrassment! Then a meeting with another security Professor, Steve Zdancewic, who specialized in language and verification security. Interesting stuff. Finally, to finish the daytime, was TA training, useless but fun as always.
After TA training, the facilitator, PhD student Peter Michael Osera, stopped me to talk about PhD and the troubles and dangers I might face. He made sure to introduce me to a friend of his who had been supervised by the same professors that seemed likely to one day be my supervisors. I took the warnings into account and also their advice to apply to a few more places as well. Perhaps The University of Melbourne should be on the books.
The evening wasn’t quite as pleasant, had somewhat of a strong disagreement with a friend I see a lot of, and that was most distressing, only to be calmed down by equally strong friends at Penn Hillel for Shabbat. B’H for that. Later in the evening the fight continued and I raced off to Steph Li’s waiting arms in tears, where time passed so quickly and my smiles returned. I had to be kicked out as the hour grew far later than I had paid attention to! What a blessing it is to have such good friends.
Wednesday – Day 226
March 17, 2013
Wednesday was one large trip to the stratosphere. I had a midterm in the morning, for which I studied a sum total of 40 minutes after waking up in the morning. Was a little worried as I thought I only knew the material at the most cursory level. I raced to the lecture hall, just a little worried. Despite all this, when I actually sat down with the paper, I completed it with little difficulty. A few small things here and there I knew I marked incorrectly, however, I left it with the confidence that my performance was at least average. Ok, not a bad start to the day.
Next up was security, and while the class was mostly just repetition of stuff that I had read about during my exploration of cryptography in my gap-year, it was still enjoyable hearing it all again. After the class the professor motioned for me to come talk with him in his office. What came next was a little surprising. I was quite bluntly encouraged to come and do my PhD at Penn, but more than that, he was interested in exploring which other University might be best for me. Cambridge was raised as a strong possibility, along with a few others. Apparently I had attracted enough attention to be seen as a good candidate for research! He also mentioned to me that he had a colleague in Google NYC who would potentially be interested in having me as an intern for summer. How exciting!
Next up was rehearsal for Glee, mostly the same as always, a little dancing on top. However after its conclusion at 7PM we were given an hour to change into Dark Suit and Tie (one of the Glee Uniforms) before a special mandatory event that evening. I have been instructed that unfortunately, for the purposes of ritual, the events of that night must remain secret, however, to my great pride I can say that I am now a ‘Oldman Nouveau ‘ of the Penn Glee Club. A member for life. Additionally I have been granted the club nickname of Croisan++, which this is my name, I am yet to discover.