In Which I Am Overcome
September 12, 2014
Today’s discovery was really that I had been taking too much on. In between Glee Club, visiting all the career fairs, research, Hillel, involvement with computer science and a whole lot of other commitments that had not yet started, I had well and truly put myself in an unfeasible position. This was most evident from my lag in the physics course and the feeling that everything was a bit out of control.
I had a full load of classes from 10:30 to 3PM and subsequently attended the security reading group. It was good fun, but I could feel myself slipping behind on homework. No sooner had I sat down to complete some of it than it was time for rehearsal, Glee Club as per usual. When I was all danced out, a quick dinner at Hillel and then I was off again to Fisher-Bennet for more rehearsals! This time for the University Choir singing Dixit Dominus and a few Bruckner motets. Rehearsal started late and ran late. By the time I got back to my room I was wholly exhausted and hadn’t even started on my assigned work. After a long night up at the computer and solving equations, I realized something had to change.
In Which I Perform for An Octogenarian
September 11, 2014
Saturday was relatively uninteresting. More Hillel food, more sleep, a modicum of work.
Sunday however was packed with ‘glee’ once more. The best element of the day was a performance for an eightieth birthday of a Penn alum. As we sung , he mouthed the lyrics to all our songs and seemed to particularly enjoy our rendition of ‘Blue Skies’.
Additionally, I spent a few hours in the day mentoring younger computer science students, preparing them for PennApps X, the biannual college hackathon.
In the evening I rehearsed again with PGC but as this was our Sunday rehearsal, we joined with Penn Dance for collaborative work for the fall show.
Ice-cream followed with my floor and soon after, sleep.
In Which I Meet and Miss Class
September 10, 2014
Today was my first 7AM wakeup for my 9AM class. After a good while of waking up later, it was unsurprising that I was drowsy and distracted for the duration of the class.
This possibly led to my further distraction during the day. My productivity was saved by a meeting with Nadia to discuss progress on the paper I was reading and additionally to make plans to help some of her other students. At some point she asked me if I had time to continue the meeting at which point, forgetting that I actually had class, replied that I had until the end of the day. The meeting was interesting and enjoyable, but when I later realized that I had missed algorithms, I felt more than a little guilty.
After the meeting I worked for a while in my office before TGIF in which the PhD students met up for some elements of food and drink. I had a good time chatting to Nadia and a few other students about fun things to do while at Penn and life in Philly in general, but soon enough I ran out of time and headed back to my room to get ready for the proceedings at Hillel that evening.
After shul at Shira, Rina Krevat (visiting from NYC), Elan Kiderman, Debby Greenstein and I went upstairs to the Hillel graduate students reception. I felt a little awkward striking up conversations left and right and repeating the same smalltalk over and over, falling back on my nationality as a talking point. Soon enough the four of us decided to go downstairs for dinner. However Hillel was pretty packed so we ended up taking our food over to the lounge. It ended up being a great chance for me to talk more to Elan and Debbie, who I knew but not nearly as well as I could have. I ended up chatting till well past midnight and only when I realized how late it was did I call it a night and head to bed happy.