In Which My Calendar Is Abused
Posted on 16th September 2014
Today’s schedule was fairly intense, with my first scheduled break appearing at 11PM.
The morning was a fierce bout of work, aiming to complete some of my homework for physics and machine learning (which was taking far more than the expected number of hours). I was realizing that my skills in probability and statistics left much to be desired for graduate coursework. The lineup following that was my usual physics class, which I had now resolved to understand but not to complete all the homework for.
After a quick lunch, it was time for a fuller piano lesson. For forty-five minutes I had a great time learning new chord progressions and a new song, felt like with a bit of practice and some guidance I’d be able to make progress much more quickly than I had previously been doing. Unfortunately I had to truncate the lesson for a meeting with the dietitian, which, while helpful, provided me with advice that I found very hard to follow. My schedule was really too hectic and I needed to do something about that before anything else.
From the appointment I set about arranging an event for the CIS PhDs in mid October. I had to fill out a whole bunch of forms for room bookings and to get permission to serve alcohol at the event as Philadelphia and the University regulations were quite tight.
After finishing a few more hours in the lab, I went to the Graduate Student Center for an event with Graduate Hillel, and met a few nice new students, who though small in number were high in quality. There was a fairly even gender balance however it was highly slanted towards Masters and Professional degrees with me being the only PhD student in the room.
Dinner was a little more relaxed this evening, but following it was a full three hour PGC rehearsal that lasted until 11! I worked until a little after midnight before sinking in to bed from a busy day.