Friday – Day 99
November 12, 2012
Friday was a large buildup to the performance and as a result I hardly payed attention in classes. Even when my singing lesson hit, I was both too exhausted and too pumped up to really focus well. Despite this, Brian noted that my singing was coming along well and I too felt I had been making good progress since coming to Penn, particularly in practicing on breathing from my diaphragm.
The evenings performance was just about sold out, with the theatre full to the brim. Our numbers were well received and I even managed to catch Shabbat dinner!
Our show opened with Footloose a combined dance number:
I’m not sure which night the video is from and this greatly affect how strong my dancing is, in addition in the videos I’ll be posting I’m rather hard to spot. However, the show still looks great, even without yours truly.
Glee’s next number was a piece I truly love by American composer Randall Thompson who has always had close ties with the Glee Club. The piece is titled: “The Last Words of David”
After the show and dinner I headed straight to sleep for a huge day of performances on the morrow.
More videos to come!
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.
Tuesday – Day 67
October 4, 2012
The second day of sukkot I enjoyed far less than the first. Tuesday’s I have electrodynamics, the course that I struggle to catch up in. As a result I decided to attend the lecture and listen in. The lecture was just as difficult as always compounded by the fact that I wasn’t writing any notes! To top it all off, the midterm was announced… one week away. I was suddenly inspired to ‘get my study on’. Other than that lunch in the sukkah was lovely, saw a few people I haven’t in a while, then studied in my room till havdalah.
After sukkot, I worked hard to prepare for my midterm, before PGC rehearsal at 9PM. The rehearsal from 9-11 was pretty much newmen only and as a result worked well for us. I finally feel confident with a good few of the songs and found which ones require more focus from me. The 11-12 rehearsal was not quite so productive. In fact, a number of the oldmen commented that it was their least productive ever. However, a highlight from it was being told who my mentor was. JHo, Jonthan Ho, an awesome tenor, agreed to mentor me for my time at Penn and presented me with a book on the history of the Glee Club and a few of their albums on CD. He, much like I, has a love of barbershop harmony, and is an all round excellent (and musical) guy.