In Which I Meet and Miss Class
September 10, 2014
Today was my first 7AM wakeup for my 9AM class. After a good while of waking up later, it was unsurprising that I was drowsy and distracted for the duration of the class.
This possibly led to my further distraction during the day. My productivity was saved by a meeting with Nadia to discuss progress on the paper I was reading and additionally to make plans to help some of her other students. At some point she asked me if I had time to continue the meeting at which point, forgetting that I actually had class, replied that I had until the end of the day. The meeting was interesting and enjoyable, but when I later realized that I had missed algorithms, I felt more than a little guilty.
After the meeting I worked for a while in my office before TGIF in which the PhD students met up for some elements of food and drink. I had a good time chatting to Nadia and a few other students about fun things to do while at Penn and life in Philly in general, but soon enough I ran out of time and headed back to my room to get ready for the proceedings at Hillel that evening.
After shul at Shira, Rina Krevat (visiting from NYC), Elan Kiderman, Debby Greenstein and I went upstairs to the Hillel graduate students reception. I felt a little awkward striking up conversations left and right and repeating the same smalltalk over and over, falling back on my nationality as a talking point. Soon enough the four of us decided to go downstairs for dinner. However Hillel was pretty packed so we ended up taking our food over to the lounge. It ended up being a great chance for me to talk more to Elan and Debbie, who I knew but not nearly as well as I could have. I ended up chatting till well past midnight and only when I realized how late it was did I call it a night and head to bed happy.
In Which I Take a Productive Break
September 6, 2014
The next day was empty. Almost entirely. I slept recovered and ate lunch with some new people. A welcome break from the hectic schedule I had previously been running under.
In the night I was a little more productive, refreshing my resume, website and doing a little coursework for cryptography. When 9.45PM hit, I set off to Rodin to join a number of friends from the community for nerf-gun capture the flag in the engineering buildings. Unlike the time in February, this time was packed out with over thirty five people playing. It was great fun and great exercise as per the previous time and I was looking forward to the subsequent times we would get to play.
Sunday was a little busier again, with Glee taking up the bulk of the day. The early afternoon was taken up by ‘Grilling with Glee’, an event held to recruit new members that largely involved us standing around free food and chatting with any prospectives as they came by. The day was a hot 33 degrees and very humid and so it wasn’t an altogether pleasant task, but I met a few new and lovely people including Jasmine, one of the tech staff for Glee that had joined the previous year. It was also a good chance to spend some more time with the other new members of PGC that had joined.
The evening consisted of sitting outside auditions to speak to auditionees and make them feel comfortable and enthusiastic about joining club. However, Sunday night was a little low on volume and so I would be returning the next night again to meet more of them.
Monday/Tuesday – Day 245/246
April 5, 2013
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do a repeat of Monday/Tuesday last week. There was no way I could miss Physics this week, and I was already dangerously behind on my other lectures. I had missed a full week of Glee, and was one strike away from failing choral society (at which 100% attendance is required). Thus, while I dressed up nicely for the day and managed lunch at Hillel, my day was mostly sitting in the back in lectures, listening quietly.
In the evening, after classes and my recitation that I’d had to prepare for chag very carefully (it went really well), I had a large block of rehearsals. Unfortunately the breaks didn’t line up with Hillel properly and as a result I missed out on dinner. Which effectively meant missing out on food. Thus, I asked Michal to save me a take away box for later. Now, I’m not sure whether it was the thing of pickles I ate, or the semi cooked chicken, but something in my day didn’t agree with me and I was in distracting pain for the next twelve hours, gaining very little sleep and as a result, not doing particularly well on Tuesday.
Tuesday was another physics lecture and more rehearsals. Singing was great! Had a good time with my songs and as always, a little progress. Today was also our first rehearsal for Time To Shine (more details to follow in the next few weeks) and I’ve gotta say, we sounded pretty awesome, despite the baritones really stretching to sing consistent E#s. And then, finally, after that, CHAMETZ!!! So excited. Real food! Sushi was first order.
Full PGC rehearsal later that day was also there, but I was pretty distracted. Food was the only thing on my mind.