Thursday/Friday – Day 227/228
March 20, 2013
Thursday was packed full again! More interviews, more office hours, more project work and more of pretty much everything but Glee Club. I guess we needed at least a little break after the previous night. My tech interview today was with a firm called Palantir and ultimately unsuccessful. I was a little frustrated as I felt they had misplaced me during team evaluation, where they decided I’d be best of interviewing for the front end and design team, really not my speciality. Regardless the interview went ok, the interviewers were friendly but perhaps ultimately not the best fit for me. Thankfully, I still have a few more lines in the ocean. Finally, a huge surprise for Thursday came in the form of a meeting with a Professor I’d been trying to chasing up for around a month.
Prof. Matt Blaze, a somewhat colourful character, with an interest in computer security, had a well deserved reputation for being hard to track down. However, it was certainly worth the effort to do so. After a thorough grilling on my background, my knowledge and ideas and more importantly, my passion and my ability to innovate a spark seemed to leap into his eye.
“So tell me,” he relaxed back into his chair, “what do we have to do to get you to study your PhD here?”
I was somewhat shocked, as my intention in meeting him was to more scope out the field of Professors and Penn and find people working in my area of interest. And here was a potential supervisor!
“I want you to move in to my lab,” he continued and proceeded to give me the PIN code to the door, “and, when someone asks you what you are working on, you are to feel guilty until you have a good answer”.
Friday with no classes, I allowed myself a little sleep in. Then it was to my new office to settle in. I felt a little awkward and out of place, but hopefully over time, I’ll find my niche there. I’m still very uncertain about the whole PhD thing, and Philly is a long way away from home to go for five to six years!
The afternoon was a series of meetings again, first the TA meeting in which Val (our Professor) took some length to describe my potential as a PhD student, much to my embarrassment! Then a meeting with another security Professor, Steve Zdancewic, who specialized in language and verification security. Interesting stuff. Finally, to finish the daytime, was TA training, useless but fun as always.
After TA training, the facilitator, PhD student Peter Michael Osera, stopped me to talk about PhD and the troubles and dangers I might face. He made sure to introduce me to a friend of his who had been supervised by the same professors that seemed likely to one day be my supervisors. I took the warnings into account and also their advice to apply to a few more places as well. Perhaps The University of Melbourne should be on the books.
The evening wasn’t quite as pleasant, had somewhat of a strong disagreement with a friend I see a lot of, and that was most distressing, only to be calmed down by equally strong friends at Penn Hillel for Shabbat. B’H for that. Later in the evening the fight continued and I raced off to Steph Li’s waiting arms in tears, where time passed so quickly and my smiles returned. I had to be kicked out as the hour grew far later than I had paid attention to! What a blessing it is to have such good friends.
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 101
November 13, 2012
I fear today’s post isn’t nearly as exciting as yesterdays, but I can’t expect to have a show everyday. However, I seem to have at least one per week. This week’s being Legally Blonde the musical, presented by Penn Singers, the premier light opera company on campus, with a standing cast of which I am part of.
Today marked load in for the show and I arrived at the PAC Show (Performing Arts Committee Workshop) to help load things into the truck to take to the theatre. Unfortunately for me, this is the least enjoyable part of amateur theater! At midday I was excused from my duties temporarily to clean up last nights party venue, the ‘Glouse’ (Glee house) aka. J.Ho and Scott Ventre’s (of the Glee Club) rented off campus accommodation. This was fast and delicious with food provided for all the newmen who showed up.
The afternoon was all set building and really a waste of my time as I sat in the corner un-needed, doing my work.
There was a one hour dinner break that I spent at Hillel and, following that it was back to the theatre for a sitzprobe (sing through of the show with the band) before finishing up finally at 11PM for a production meeting that ran till midnight. All in all 14hrs of rehearsal. Not as much fun as Saturday.