Thursday – Day 170
January 23, 2013
Thursday I managed to stay attentive during physics despite the lack of sleep, but was busy almost the entire afternoon with homework of various sorts. However, Thursday also marked the lead up to PennApps over the coming weekend where thanks to the day off on Monday, I would spend approximately 48 hours coding non stop. PennApps is a student ‘hackathon’, a competition in which you have a set amount of time to build something technological from scratch. PennApp is also the largest college hackathon in the world with over 500 attendees semesterly! Part of the day was spent searching for team members and figuring out ideas. Eventually I ended up with the usual crew, Rigel and Nikki, with whom I was most excited to work with.
In the evening I attended a talk by Facebook on getting started using their developer tools to make apps and caught up with Rigel for a brief talk regarding how our team would run. Following that I went for a delicious dinner with around thirteen exchange students and though we had to wait a while for our table, the spicy szechuan food was excellent (I had some very yummy spicy fish!).
The rest of my night was spent preparing all my homework and the homework for CIS121 before the weekend, as I knew there would be a mountain of stuff to get done. Up again till the wee hours of the morning, I was a bit behind but I was motivated to keep going in order to leave myself time over the long weekend.
Delay.
January 22, 2013
There’s a lot coming. Just hold on. I’ve been pretty busy (literally 48 hours without sleep). Details to follow.
Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 168/169
January 18, 2013
Tuesday I was invited to the Phi Psi date night and went urgently looking for a date. To my luck I ran into a good friend from Penn Singers, Lauren Nagy, whom I asked and who agreed to accompany me. Physics in the morning was difficult again. I’ll be most glad when I’m done with electromagnetism but I think I may need to retake the course when I get home in order to be sure I’ve learnt the material well enough. After physics was my first singing lesson of the semester which was enjoyable as always. It provides me with an opportunity to have my improvement measured and the chance to improve further.
Following the singing lesson I attended the visit of the Australian Consul General to the University of Pennsylvania and heard him speak on how best to ‘bat for team Australia’. This inspired me to start a plan for an Australia student network across the Ivy League schools.
Then it was dinner and a quick change into a suit before Glee rehearsal. Unfortunately I could only linger for twenty minutes before dashing outside to run through the rain to the Phi Psi chapter house, where I met Lauren. There we socialized pleasantly with the other brothers, potential pledges and their dates before heading off in taxis to the venue. When we arrived at the venue, the first thing that struck us was the volume. The music was cranked way up high and it was difficult to talk to one another amidst the booming beats. Unfortunately this detracted from the experience as a whole and resulted in Lauren and I leaving a little earlier than we might otherwise have intended. As it turned out, this was my last event with the brothers. I was dropped from the process, which was completely understandable, and returned to life as before.
Wednesday I resumed compsci classes and unfortunately this meant returning to a very large workload. I was gifted by Professors Boon and Smith with two assignments, due the following week. With much else to do besides, the familiar stress levels from fall semester were returning. In the afternoon I set about completing various logistical tasks I had left, before Glee rehearsal at 5. After rehearsal I had a meeting with two of the other TAs for CIS121 in which we planned and wrote the homework for the week. Finally getting back to my room late I began work on the assignments and passed out somewhere around 2AM.