In Which I Overcommit
September 4, 2014
Today was my first physics class. I was excited to begin quantum mechanics, yet, when I arrived it turned out I had already missed a full hour of class the previous day. Unbeknownst to me, while I was sorting out my enrollment, the first tutorial slot had already been filled by a lecture! However, given the fact that I had just recently completed my degree in physics, it was not to difficult to catch up on the few bits of linear algebra revision I had missed.
Following the lecture, I returned to Hillel for lunch and browsed the student activities fair. The student activities fair was a giant array of tables and stalls set out along locust walk, with every student group represented. I signed up to pretty much everything, wanting to gather information on all the opportunities available on campus. In retrospect I probably signed up to a few too many and would later start un-signing myself from a number of clubs that I prematurely joined.
At 7PM I raced back to my room for the ‘hall meeting’ in which I met the ‘graduate associate’ for my floor, an adviser from the graduate body who provides pastoral care and support to all the residents. The meeting was uneventful but not un-enjoyable and Karen, the GA was very relaxed. Soon after I sprinted over to the Annenberg Performing Arts center for a sound check to arrange an upcoming concert, and following that to Ware College house for another hour long gig. This gig was particularly high on energy and the numbers that I wasn’t in all sounded excellent and were highly entertaining.
The following day was mostly empty and I spent much of it in my lab, reading papers and getting some homework done. Other than that, the usual running around to arrange my new life. I took a nap in the early afternoon to rid myself of the last vestiges of jetlag and subsequently it was time for Shira Chadasha at Hillel. The service that evening was particularly beautiful but also packed full with people. I’d estimate over one hundred and twenty people had crammed into one small hot room, all singing, all dancing. Dinner was at Hillel again, nothing special to report, but I hung around for a long time to chat with a number of old friends.
Before going to sleep I made a quick pitstop at the ‘glouse’ (glee club house/residence), said a quick hello and then was fast asleep, not to wake till late the next morning.
In Which My New Education Begins
September 3, 2014
Note for some of you unfamiliar with my blog, I’m always late in writing things up, so this post refers to the events of 27/Aug.
Today was my first day of classes however the day didn’t start till 10:30, leaving me plenty of time for a sleep in. After waking up late, I headed to the library to pick up some books and subsequently to the distributed systems lab (where I had a desk) to lay down my belongings. My first lecture was CIS520: Machine Learning with Lyle Ungar which was so overfull that around fifteen people sat on the stairs for the duration of the lecture. The lecture itself was brilliant. Lyle was highly energetic, clear, concise and gave excellent examples and motivation for everything he did. I was really looking forward to future lectures. Following that was cryptography with Nadia. The course wasn’t quite as thrilling given that I’d seen the material before, however what was really exciting was the homework released at the end! Eleven ciphers all encoded using a ‘one-time-pad’ with the mistake of additionally using the same encryption key for all of the messages.
After a meeting with Nadia to discuss my first semester of research (breaking the Linux PRNG), I obtained a key to the first year PhD office from Charity Payne and sat down there to work on breaking the codes. The first year office was actually quite nice, with around twenty desks and plenty of natural light. There was a kitchenette, a whiteboard and a nice meeting area with some couches. My own desk had a terminal and some drawers and served quite nicely for my uses. I sat down to work on cracking the codes with an almost single minded focus, not making much progress for a while. When I glanced at the clock I found hours had passed! It was already time for me to run off to a final new graduate student event at the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.
I arrived there and caught up with a few of the other PhD students that I remembered, grabbed a snack and walked around the booths offering student services. The event was fairly fancy but I surmised that it would be the last pricey looking event that I’d be invited to as a graduate student for some time. After the speeches I met a girl from the Graduate School of Education by the name of Kimberly. She had bright red hair and an equally glowing smile. After a few minutes of conversation I found that her parents had educated her well, teaching her dungeons and dragons and initiating her into most of geek-culture from a young age. We got caught up talking for quite some time and when I looked at my phone to check the time I realized I was over forty minutes late for Glee Club call-time. I apologized and raced off, forgetting her name and missing her contact details.
That evening was the Glee Club ‘free show’, an introductory concert for freshman to advertise to them for the purposes of encouraging auditions. I unfortunately had to sit out on a few of the dance numbers giving my lack of experience with them. The show went fairly well and a few alumni I hadn’t seen in the past year made it out to see us, which was wonderful. The free show left me exhausted so after another full day, I went straight to sleep without anything in between.
In Which I Sing For My Cake
September 1, 2014
The jet lag was starting to wear off. Finally. However waking up early was useful as I had need to be at J. M. Huntsman Hall at 9AM. We were to be performing at a welcome gig for freshman students at the Wharton School. After a little rehearsal and some hanging around, the students filed in and we begun to sing. This was quite possibly the worst gig I have ever been a part of. The students were loud and raucous and paid us little to no attention. I don’t begrudge them in the least, but it wasn’t the best of choices to have us perform in that venue. I could hardly hear any of us singing, except a booming in my left ear from the bass, Matt Howard.
My uniform was a little outdated by this point and needed some revisions, thus my next stop was to Macy’s in ‘Center City’ (the central business district of Philadelphia). The actual shopping part took relatively little time, and I found suitable ‘chocolate brown’ shoes without too much fuss. However, when I attempted to pay for my items, the cashier was put through on the phone to card security and I had to go through a relatively arduous process to verify my identity. Despite my best efforts the payment didn’t go through in the end, so after fifteen-minutes of verifying, I ended up just putting the amount on a different card.
With a significant delay from Macy’s, I raced back to Penn for continued rehearsals. The afternoon was dance numbers with the band and I struggled through them, not having the experience of the other members.
That evening was one of our bigger regularly scheduled gigs: convocation, the formal opening of the academic year by the university dignitaries. After the opening of ceremonies we performed ‘Go The Distance’ as a musical interlude and then to close the ceremony was ‘The Red and the Blue’, the official school song. However the best element of singing for convocation was our early access to the dessert reception immediately following. After consuming a good deal of cake and cookies, Sam Soik (a fellow Baritone) and I sought after the mythical President Amy Guttman for a photo opportunity. After some searching we had our pictures taken and were then both satisfied enough to grab some final food before returning to our dorms for the night.