Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Shabbat – Day 124/125/126/127/128
December 5, 2012
You probably noticed that I’ve practically rolled the entire week into one. I can assure you, that’s how it felt to me. One giant, long, torturous day. Tuesday I was not yet fully aware of how my week would good, so I woke up at a decently late hour before physics at 10:30AM. However as the day wore on and the Operating Systems group got together it became clearer and clearer that we weren’t on track to finish the project. Tuesday night also marked the long glee rehearsal, from nine to midnight. However, even after completing that, I had to walk the twenty minutes to the engineering buildings to work till around five AM. Wednesday I was already out of it, and didn’t attend my algorithms lecture in order to scrape an extra hours sleep. I did make it bleary eyed to Rails class, but with so little focus, I may as well have been in bed. After Glee rehearsal, 5-7, it was another full night coding, five AM again. Thursday I was up at 7AM and was barely hanging on to the remaining threads of life, and the file system component of our OS was still nowhere near to being done.
By this point I was getting a bit aggravated and irritable with some of my other team members, which was not wise, and this further exacerbated the various existing problems. I did make it to all my classes Thursday, which was a miracle if I might say so. Thursday night however, was one of the worst things I have ever done to myself: nineteen hours straight of coding. We worked through the night, and didn’t slow, even as the sun began to rise, in the Rodin ninth floor lounge we pounded away at the keys and scratched our heads, as others scratched theirs in amazement as they woke up to see us the same way we were as the night before. This was surely an intensity of work not matched by any course at Melbourne Uni.
Friday morning, I was death incarnate. I reaped my way through what lines of code I could, before dragging my hollow body across Locust Walk for a final presentation of the lines that had so drained my life. Though our demo was passable, I knew that our code was a mess and our team in shambles. However, finally, it was over. I trudged back in the direction of Rodin and was caught on my way to my room by lunch at Hillel. However, I didn’t last long there, and soon I was wrapped up in bed. To stay there for twenty seven hours. Fast asleep almost the entire time. And just like that Shabbat disappeared.
Friday/Saturday – Day 106/107
November 18, 2012
The march of stress continues. I didn’t manage algorithms today and my singing lesson was cut short due to complete exhaustion. Though I’m equally as tired today while writing this, it’s for entirely separate reasons that I’ll get to later. Friday’s show ran well, nothing special there, and managed to get to shul and dinner as well.
Shabbat itself was somewhat more tiring with a Glee Club alumni reception alongside the shows. At least my now I was close to a few cast and crew members. I hardly managed to eat all day as too much was happening, and I know it wasn’t wise but in this case there were just too many issues. After the show finished late motzei Shabbat we began load-out/strike, clearing the set and packing up. This took a great many hours, and we were called from around eight PM to three AM. At three we had the cast party, however with all the work I was behind on from the last two weeks I couldn’t really partake part in it very fully and only stayed for a short while before heading to bed for what I hoped would be a good while.
Sunday – Day 93
October 31, 2012
Hurricane Sandy is coming! Bolt down the windows and door, keep your children close! This morning also marked the start of PGC hell week and boy was it going to be a whole lot of hell.
I arose early to get a little work down before a lovely breakfast with Dad at ten thirty. Unfortunately it was then we discovered that his flights had been cancelled and together we spent the next two hours trying to get hold of someone at the airlines with the ability to get him from Philly to San Diego in the next three days. At 1PM I had to run to load-in (set up for a show) at the Iron Gate theatre and worked my butt off till 5:05 when we had a forty five minute break. Yup. A long rehearsal. I arrived back at the hotel room to find two things: first, classes at Penn had been cancelled for the next two days and, Dad was no closer to finding a flight out of the city. I grabbed a quick dinner downstairs with him and at 6PM returned to the theater.
A few hours in we were informed that the theatre would be closed for the next two days, thus denying us the 6-12 rehearsal that were planned for every day of the week and that as a result, we would be cancelling our Thursday performance debut! In addition, to compensate for the lost rehearsal tonight ran till one AM. That’s a whopping 13hr rehearsal!
After that I most surely went to sleep pretty promptly.