Thursday/Friday – Day 184/185
February 3, 2013
Thursday I found myself with more time than expected and even had an interesting and productive physics lecture in the morning that delved into the workings behind MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). The afternoon saw more errands (they never seem to end) before a lovely dinner at Hillel, a meeting with the dining philosophers and, a few more ‘shop hours’ building the Glee Club set.
Friday was a little nightmarish. I woke up late after my usual night of intense work and went straight to grading homework for the computer science class. The problems proved more subtle than initially assumed and as a result took us a great many hours. In face as a team of 14 TAs we were grading for more than 4 hours. This left me quite tired after the subsequent TA training and faculty meeting. Shabbat dinner was nice as the company was excellent (Ariella, Aviva, Michal to name a few) and I had a proud moment of remembering a ‘mishna’ that detailed the ‘halacha’ when it came time to decide if we could ‘bench’ separately or not (ignore the sentence if you missed those words). I hung around with the jew-crew for a few hours, then sleep. Peaceful 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.
Sunday/Monday – 166/167
January 15, 2013
Sunday was another day of attempted recovery. Thankfully I was slowly getting better. I wrote a bit of a lesson plan for my lab the next day. Tried getting some more work done but I was sadly very unsuccessful. The afternoon brought dance rehearsal and unfortunately I was excluded from the vast majority of it due to my small role in the show. Sat on the sidelines most of the time. For dinner I got sushi by myself which, was most relaxing and something I appreciate doing as it gives me a little time out! Afterwards I baked cookies for my lab the next day and invited Charlie to come try them out. Success!
Monday (finally back up to date), I was consistently happy. I’m not 100% sure why the day was quite so incredible, but I was happy throughout. My lab went really well, classes were fine (though I almost well asleep in one) and dinner and glee rehearsal suited my tastes. I sung the first movement of the Brahms requiem (beautiful as expected) and got a hot chocolate with Steph Li. All in all a wonderful day.