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.
Superbowl – Shabbat/Sunday – Day 186/187
February 4, 2013
Shabbat was fairly stock standard for me, sleep in till late, trying desperately to catch up on a missed week worth of sleep. In the evening I worked with Charu on some code for networking and managed to complete my assignment, which was great. Then moved on to dinner with Shadia Al Shafei, a Saudi friend of mine from computer science. Pasta in my apartment tasted better than expected and we hung around for a while chatting, eating pistachios and strawberries. I again worked late into the night.
Sunday (wow, I’m writing about today for once), was a combination of work and fun. The morning was spent on physics until Charu came by and pointed out a bug in my code (for which I was most grateful) and she hung around till around 2PM. From there I raced to the Rose Recital Hall for the final violin recital of a good friend Amalya Lehmann. She performed beautifully and managed the difficult and demanding Kreutzer sonata, (by Beethoven). She was so wonderful that the audience threw multiple roses at her by the end! After that I was late to PGC rehearsal and burst in just as I was meant to have a solo (didn’t end well) and stayed there for a good two hours doing an initial run through of our show.
Next up in the day plan was the Superbowl! For those of you who don’t know the Superbowl is the equivalent of the NFL (US Football League) ‘grand final’, and is watched live by many millions. First stop on my party tour was Hillel where they were eating ‘dougie’s’ for dinner, an apparently famous NYC kosher restaurant. I wasn’t so impressed. Next up on the list was the exchange student party where I engaged in spirited political debate with a somewhat drunken Sam Murray of Australia. I watched the half time Beyonce spectacular (really was pretty spectacular) and then went off to the ‘Glouse’ to chill with Glee for a bit. However, due to my outspoken nature I ended up in another political debate and with another new friend Lainie Huston.
My night however was not over! From ten onwards I worked with Pulak Mittal (a veritable celebrity in the computer science department) the head TA of my algorithms course and, with Grace Wang, another co-ta. Together we assembled parts of homework four and at just after midnight I came back to my room to write and hopefully (soon) to sleep.
Sunday/Monday – 180/181
January 29, 2013
Sunday I was up bright and early, despite a late night of coding, to go work with Charu Jangid, a friend from my Networking graduate course. We spent a number of hours together, hacking away on some basic socket coding (networking stuff) and when it got to 2PM we decided it was getting late and that we had better stop for some modicum of food. Lunch was nice and we finally got around to chatting about a few things other than computer science. Following that we both when to our respective dorms and I worked inefficiently on both Physics and preparation for my lab the next day. Rehearsal at 5 took a lot of my remaining energy and so I was pretty tired when it came to dinner and learning at Hillel. Read a few nice thoughts on Purim while studying there and then worked till the early hours of the morning to get my Physics done.
Monday morning was another bright and early start, with a Physics tutorial starting at 9AM. After that I went to office hours with a few professors to help get a handle on some work. I planned my lab and worked out how I was going to run it. What was nice was the company as I was surrounded by fellow TAs and this gave me a chance to get to know them at least a little better whilst working. My classes almost put me to sleep this afternoon. Thankfully I had my recitation to wake me up. The snack roster worked as planned and a game of memory at the start helped to engender a sense of community amongst the class. From there we divided up into teams to work on generating accurate solutions to the lab problems with prizes for the best team. In my opinion other than a few breaks in my coherence during the proof sections, the lab went well.
Monday night meant Glee rehearsal, and though I was late, I still managed to gain plenty out of it. Following rehearsal I received some bad news via email, and a few of my summer plans were shot down, however I knew that any disappointment would be short lived. Dinner was a quick stop off at Hillel and then off to learn more of the Brahms requiem. Rehearsal was ok, though I was exhausted at this point and so my sight reading was a little off. The one saving grace for my evening was my time with Steph Li who amusingly and much to my excitement was now roommates with Alba Braso, a wonderful exchange student from Barcelona. So over the next forty minutes I had a chance to feel a little better by chatting to those two before returning to my room to work that late physics night again.