In Which I Perform for An Octogenarian
September 11, 2014
Saturday was relatively uninteresting. More Hillel food, more sleep, a modicum of work.
Sunday however was packed with ‘glee’ once more. The best element of the day was a performance for an eightieth birthday of a Penn alum. As we sung , he mouthed the lyrics to all our songs and seemed to particularly enjoy our rendition of ‘Blue Skies’.
Additionally, I spent a few hours in the day mentoring younger computer science students, preparing them for PennApps X, the biannual college hackathon.
In the evening I rehearsed again with PGC but as this was our Sunday rehearsal, we joined with Penn Dance for collaborative work for the fall show.
Ice-cream followed with my floor and soon after, sleep.
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday – Day 175/176/177
January 28, 2013
I’m finding a lot of my time now goes towards preparing for my teaching and similar duties. Much of Tuesday was spent working on solving various problems for students, fixing up the homework and holding my office hours. My hours were in fact quite enjoyable and gave me a chance to get to know a few of my fellow TAs a little better (@Dennis, @Harmony, @Pulak). As per usual I had the dreaded physics lecture. Things had ramped up so quickly with me barely noticing that by this time I was flying fast enough that my wings had started smoking. Tuesday night I had barely enough time to eat before heading off to Glee rehearsal where we examined the result of the full club survey. Turns out everyone is pretty happy the way things are.
Wednesday was another chock full day and after staying up so late to work the night before, I only just woke up in time to get ready for my midday class. My classes were not particularly challenging, it was more the workload that was getting to me. The dreaded sleep deprived demon was rising from the Penn purgatorial pits, and was quickly consuming my remaining wits. After class I had a quick chance for a break, before heading back into rehearsal (as always) and then to more office hours!
Thursday challenged me again in terms of time management but I found a little more freedom with only one class in the morning. Most of my afternoon was spent arranging various things, starting to get my room together and running about from place to place. I had a meeting with the graduate chair to discuss future options for study in the field of computer science, particularly looking at Penn as an option. It seems I may have some large decisions in my future. Thursday night I spent in ‘shop hours’, assisting in the construction of the Spring Show set by painting for a few hours and chatting to Jon Ferrari, a Glee oldman who was one of the few I had yet to interview. Finally, my school week came to an end, as Friday I was to have no classes.
Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Shabbat – Day 124/125/126/127/128
December 5, 2012
You probably noticed that I’ve practically rolled the entire week into one. I can assure you, that’s how it felt to me. One giant, long, torturous day. Tuesday I was not yet fully aware of how my week would good, so I woke up at a decently late hour before physics at 10:30AM. However as the day wore on and the Operating Systems group got together it became clearer and clearer that we weren’t on track to finish the project. Tuesday night also marked the long glee rehearsal, from nine to midnight. However, even after completing that, I had to walk the twenty minutes to the engineering buildings to work till around five AM. Wednesday I was already out of it, and didn’t attend my algorithms lecture in order to scrape an extra hours sleep. I did make it bleary eyed to Rails class, but with so little focus, I may as well have been in bed. After Glee rehearsal, 5-7, it was another full night coding, five AM again. Thursday I was up at 7AM and was barely hanging on to the remaining threads of life, and the file system component of our OS was still nowhere near to being done.
By this point I was getting a bit aggravated and irritable with some of my other team members, which was not wise, and this further exacerbated the various existing problems. I did make it to all my classes Thursday, which was a miracle if I might say so. Thursday night however, was one of the worst things I have ever done to myself: nineteen hours straight of coding. We worked through the night, and didn’t slow, even as the sun began to rise, in the Rodin ninth floor lounge we pounded away at the keys and scratched our heads, as others scratched theirs in amazement as they woke up to see us the same way we were as the night before. This was surely an intensity of work not matched by any course at Melbourne Uni.
Friday morning, I was death incarnate. I reaped my way through what lines of code I could, before dragging my hollow body across Locust Walk for a final presentation of the lines that had so drained my life. Though our demo was passable, I knew that our code was a mess and our team in shambles. However, finally, it was over. I trudged back in the direction of Rodin and was caught on my way to my room by lunch at Hillel. However, I didn’t last long there, and soon I was wrapped up in bed. To stay there for twenty seven hours. Fast asleep almost the entire time. And just like that Shabbat disappeared.