In Which I Was Both Oriented and Disoriented
September 1, 2014
Today marked the first official day of proceedings for incoming graduate students. However before our 9.45AM start I had a few errands to run. One of which included the purchasing of a new phone. This was harder than it sounds given the outrageous prices that networks charge for service in the US. A standard bill will run upwards of $50/month for the same as I would pay $15/month for at home. I googled around and found a provider, Cricket (owned by AT&T) that seemed a little more reasonable and found a store within walking distance.
Not being super familiar with the area it was in, I printed out a copy of the map and set off with my phone and emergency roaming enabled. After around minutes of walking I soon realized the store was in perhaps a sub optimal location for me to be walking in alone. Dilapidated buildings on the side, people giving me strange looks, and streets in disrepair, north-west Philly was probably not the safest location. Furthermore a little later I found myself directionally challenged and ended up being escorted by a friendly guy down the street to where the tiny shop stood. After purchasing the phone, I high-tailed it out over to the Penn Museum where orientation was to begin.
Orientation itself was fairly predictable. The dean of the school of engineering was well spoken and gave an effective address to the new graduate students. The PhD students were seated alone on one side of the auditorium as we were to be excused early from the flood of un-informational speakers repeating orientation material that could be gleaned in a single glance of the universities website.
The department of Computer and Information Science’s orientation was a little better, much more down to earth and helpful. I sat next to Luke and Dagean, two students that I had already met and in front of Nadia, a professor with whom was to be working. After another hour we broke off for an early lunch and I had a chance to chat with both some old and new students. Amazingly enough I found someone who had met my close friend Rosa Zwier just a week prior in South Korea!
The afternoon sessions weren’t too exciting. More presentations about what student services were available and a sorry presentation by the engineering librarian, whose library had been closed over the summer break.
The orientation sessions closed with a PhD only happy hour over at the Tap House bar. I made a couple of new friends, in particular two girls in Electrical and Systems Engineering, Ling and Kelsey, who were very amiable and whom I would bump into many times over the next few days.
My day closed as expected with more glee commitments, this time a checking of our outfits that didn’t last too long and soon again, I was fast asleep in bed.
Glee Club Never Stops
August 31, 2014
The next day was almost a sleep in, qualified by the fact that I was waking up at strange hours during the night. I was still in the fierce grasp of jet lag. I finally got up just before lunch and went to Hillel to shmooze with everyone. I wasn’t the only one who had woken up late as a good number of other people were still dragging themselves in. Lunch was fairly standard. I sat with some new freshman along with a few new people all of whom were friendly enough.
Sadly, I had to run off to rehearsal all too quickly. Rehearsal itself was fine but I struggled a little with the ‘production numbers’, dance numbers that the rest of the chorus had learnt over the past year and that I was scrambling to fit into. I tired myself out pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before I was ready to crawl into bed again.
The next day I was again up earlier than expected and used the time to talk to people at home and sort out my room. Once the sun came up, I got out of bed and went out to Hillel where they were setting up the activities fair to introduce freshmen to all the available opportunities. As I had nothing better to do early that day I helped set up and met a few new people in the process. I hung around for a few hours until yet again, it was time for rehearsal.
After a few more hours of singing, dancing and, singing again, I ditched the last few minutes of rehearsal to run off to a new graduate student event. A campus wide gnome-hunt. This was the highlight of my weekend. In a team of about fifteen new graduate students, we raced around campus following clues to pick up mini plastic gnomes scattered around the eastern side of campus. I became quite friendly with a number of my teammates and in the happy hour following the hunt met a few more. This included two other Australian/New Zealand nationals over which I was quite pleased. Afterwards, a few of the grad students and I headed over to “Tap House”, a local bar to continue hanging out for a while. After a few drinks and a pleasant breeze, the jet lag returned and so I headed back to my room and called it a night.
Back to Basics
August 28, 2014
Friday was hectic and exhausting. I woke up at 3AM from jetlagged and tossed and turned, unable to get back to sleep. First order was getting my ‘PennCard’, ID and access card that I needed to get in anywhere. There I ran into an old friend (what would soon be a common occurrence), Amanda Bell, who I had met in my first week as an exchange student. From there I walked out to West Philadelphia to the ‘Cricket Wireless’ store for a new phone a SIM card. Part way along my walk I began to realize that the neighborhood I was walking into perhaps wasn’t ideal in terms of safety, but I stayed cheery and was in and out of there in almost no time.
International Student check-in was a horribly boring repeat experience of what I had already gone through twice before on my prior visas. No new information there. Introduced myself to a few other international students but the only real value there was in the tea.
Rehearsal took a good chunk of the afternoon, and what it didn’t was consumed by a long afternoon nap.
Shabbat dinner at Hillel was lovely, lots of old faces and some new ones too. However, I didn’t manage to stay particularly long before I was tired out and walked slowly back to my room in Harrison.