Monday/Tuesday – Day 80/81
October 19, 2012
Monday and Tuesday were both huge work days!
Monday I was up early working on a physics problem set before the recitation (tutorial) at 9AM and struggled with more electrodynamics. At ten was my usual algorithms class in which we finally covered mergesort, which was good for me as I had an interview scheduled for Tuesday in which I’d expected I’d need at least one sorting algorithm.
Tuesday also had scheduled a midterm for my operating systems class, but distracted by the Physics and interview prep I hardly had a chance to study for it.
Monday night was the usual rehearsal timetable, first a few hours of Glee, followed by an hour break to catch dinner and then two hours of University Choral Society. However, I was feeling so sick at this point that I notified Joseph Ooi, in charge of the roster for Glee Club and, let him know I wouldn’t be making it that night.
Dinner was at Hillel with a bunch of the Glee Club guys including Scott Ventre, who told some fantastic stories about his prior years at college but, before he could finish I had to run off to choir rehearsal. I walked to rehearsal with Thea Walton, a lovely girl from Perth and had a fantastic catch up with her. Rehearsal was filled with my coughs and I was so glad to get back to my room and too sleep.
Tuesday was a bit of a nightmare and full of stress. In terms of the physics work, I only managed the most basic set of questions. For the Operating Systems exam I found little more time to study and the test was significantly harder and longer than I expected. After Operating System, I had rehearsal till 7PM when my interview was.
The interview was a great experience with challenging but satisfying questions that though I didn’t feel like I answered particularly well, I at least showed the way I approach questions which I thought was too my advantage.
Following the interview there was the awful 9-12 PGC rehearsal and again, I felt too sick to make it to all of the rehearsal and ended up leaving at 11PM to get an earlier nights rest.
Thursday – Day 76
October 12, 2012
Thursday (my birthday) didn’t start to well as I woke up feeling awful and exhausted thanks to the late night of coding. Physics, expectedly, didn’t improve my mood. Lunch at Hillel was no better and very few of my friends were in today. Operating systems in the afternoon was marginally better and I slept through most of it, waking only to answer questions from the lecturer. Towards the end of the lecture my phone buzzed and I raced outside seeing the +972 country code and was very grateful to speak to my brother Adi for a few minutes.
Following that Jonathan and I went to office hours to try and fix up some of the bugs in our code. After a little help, I was soon on my way again, this time for a walk by myself for a little soothing me time. I walked all the way across the Schuylkill River and into center city. This was the beautiful view of the Philly Skyline from South Bridge.
After that I just wandered through suburbia for a bit just enjoying myself, before popping into a liquor store to buy a mini whiskey bottle (Jack Daniels) and a nice bottle of Australian wine. I just kept walking and walking till I came across a nice little cafe and bought a fresh sandwich on whole wheat. However, I still have to say, Americans have no idea how to do food. Nothing is as fresh or as crisp as it should be, and everything is slathered in sauces with all sorts of extras no one needs.
Returning in time for dinner at Hillel, which was not spectacular either, I met up with Michal and Arianna who took me to Ben and Jerry’s after dinner for a free scoop of birthday ice-cream!
Back to my room again for a few hours, just working hard at it, before at 10PM I decided to call in Rigel, my neighbor and Anil, for a celebratory glass of whisky. We toasted to health and a successful semester and chatted for a few minutes.
I also received an email inviting me to a party for the cast of Legally Blonde and went there for a good two hours, having a smashing time and was again, toasted, by the cast, and sung a few songs kareoke.
At 1AM I returned to my room and still needed to work with Jonathan! Up for another while working before finally, at three, I was able to get to sleep.
Wednesday – Day 68
October 5, 2012
It’s rather exciting to be almost caught up on the blog. It means I can almost remember things that have happened. One of the most amazing things about studying abroad is the sheer number of experiences that get packed into such a limited period of time!
For example today was my first ever ‘midterm’; in algorithms. I knew the material relatively solidly going in however as soon as the test started I panicked a bit and stress overcame me. As a result I don’t think I did too well, thankfully all my subjects here transfer back as pass fail, even though I am assigned grades by Penn.
I wasted much of the rest of the day, not caring too much, as I was too put off by the exam.
The evening was a PGC rehearsal combined with our band, and involved us attempting to dance and sing both at the same time. Whilst combined, it was something of a failure, the individual elements worked well and I’m sure that with practice, we’ll improve greatly.
After rehearsal I had a quick dinner at Hillel in the Sukkah, followed by a walk to the Penn Arts Shop. Shop in this case being shorthand for workshop, where all the performing arts groups at Penn construct their sets, build their props and, design their costumes. I was quickly set to work by Sarah Tomberlin, the stage manager for Legally Blonde, scraping paint off chairs that had been painted on, layer over layer, for years. The paint was thick and hard to remove, and the scraper blunt and ineffective. I was also working by myself, in my own corner of the room. Another dud job, but one that had to be done. About one hour in it hit 9PM when I knew the presidential debate was going to be started, and I and a lovely but highly partisan ‘democrat’ girl petitioned for the laptop playing the music to be switched to a live stream of the debate. After around fifteen minutes of fumbling around the stream came on and we set to analyzing the debate, or in her case ripping Romney to shreds. I neglected to mention to her that though I didn’t necessarily support him, I thought Romney had better presented himself. Finally, after a second hour of scraping, this time with her, I finally set back off to Rodin where I worked for a few hours and then headed off to sleep.