Monday/Tuesday – Day 252/253
Posted on 16th April 2013
As my workload ramps up, my time at Penn is slowly ramping down. I’ve started chucking out the things I don’t need and have arranged face to faces with a number of people I still stand to set things in order with. Though it may seem early, there’s a lot to be done in between now and the start of May. It’s a particularly weird situation because Penn is now starting to feel like home more than home in Melbourne. Probably a good thing I leave now then.
Monday things were pretty crazy as always. This was heightened by the fact that I was literally panicking over my Physics exam. I skipped all my classes and recitation was a little underwhelming, I just didn’t have the energy to make it as wonderful today. Hopefully my students forgive me. I count two sub-my-standards labs thus far in a semester of 14 weeks.
Monday night I took some time off the study for a Glee Club Gig at the Kimmel Performing Arts Center, the most important arts venue in Philly. We were performing on a sidestage for the acapella festival and ran a forty-five minute set. It was actually quite enjoyable but my mind was elsewhere. From there I raced back for a short dinner at Hillel before it was off to the music buildings for Brahms’ Requiem rehearsal. That went ok but again, my mind was on Maxwell.
I got back to my room and felt sick stressed and exhausted so I decided better to go to sleep early and work on the physics in the morning.
Tuesday I was up at 6:30AM studying for the test and things weren’t actually going as poorly as the could’ve. I was understanding the material even if I wasn’t exactly capable of drawing many unique solutions or new thoughts from it, at least I had the basic idea of what was going on.
A few hours later I headed off to the exam itself and sat down. From my perspective the paper was a disaster. Questions I had no idea how to solve and important things I had forgotten. I did my best and managed at least to write down a few things for each question on the paper, hoping it would be enough to scrape by.
My afternoon was planned to be a bit more free but unfortunately, the stress that I had caused myself with physics got the better of me. By now I was thoroughly sick. I went to my singing lesson with Brian and had to cease after my warmups. My body just wasn’t taking it. Unfortunately, the repercussions of the exam would last a while.
I went straight to sleep, only waking when it was time for another Glee gig. This was another internal awards ceremony for esteemed alumni. I could hardly croak out a tune, and during the performance my voice cracked audibly. I should not have been singing. Thankfully, Scott Ventre had my back, covering me as a baritone despite his lovely tenor sound.
Following that I escaped briefly for dinner at Hillel before it was back with Glee for the conclusion of board elections. Things were tough and tight but ultimately, I feel that strong candidates were selected for all the positions.
Finally, just past midnight, I was able to get to sleep, and try and aid my aching body.