Tuesday/Wednesday – 281/282
May 12, 2013
The past few days I’ve been starting a plan to get into shape. This involved going running consistently every morning and pushing myself (and Ariella who has been coming with me) harder every day. Over the past few days our pace has been slow and the distance we cover not too far, however I am confident that this will improve over time. If only I wasn’t leaving so soon!
Following shacharit, our morning run, and a long Saxby’s (coffee) break, I headed off to the Distributed Systems Research Lab (security lab) to meet with Mr Bill Cheswick, a visiting expert in the field. As I was walking I received an email “when are you coming? there are people here waiting for you – ches”. This somewhat surprised me as I was under the impression that I was just meeting with him, in order to hear his thoughts on PhD programs. When I arrived I was quickly corralled into a chair and introduced to all the members of the security group. They were all very distinct personalities, from Sandy, the mature age student to a man mysteriously known only as Q. Ches and Matt Blaze (the head of the group) were both there as well.
As a group they then sat me down in an attempt to convince me to come on board as a PhD student. They told stories of the things I could be doing and showed me much gadgetry I’d have access to. They explained why this was the ‘right’ path to be taking at this point in my life and why I was an appropriate fit for the position. After a time, Matt disappeared and Sandy handed me a set of lockpicks and a few practice locks and introduced me to the start of what would be an interesting few days practicing security.
In the evening I made pasta for Madeleine again, went for my run with Ariella and, afterwards went to my room to continue packing. After a few hours, on the return of Hannah from her home, I went to drag her to play piano with me. She was a bit out of practice on the keys but sang wonderfully! Had a great time for the hour before Glee Club rehearsal. Yup, it started again.
Wednesday began back in the security lab, playing with a magnetic strip reader and trying to improve my lockpicking. Progress came, but it was achingly slow. Muscle memory takes a while. The afternoon was taken up by Glee Club again, rehearsal and a full club meeting for the yearly post-mortem. I had to keep popping in and out though, as I was lending my room key to Ariel Jacobi, a female friend from Hillel who need a place to temporarily store her bags.
Following rehearsal, Ariella and I ordered food in to my place and settled down to finish watching Toy Story 3 (I must admit there were definitely a few tears at the end). We talked for a few more hours, and I walked her home to Alyse Schongold’s (another good friend) at whose place she was staying. Alyse is almost like a sister to me, providing words of wisdom and a real grounding. As a side point she also makes delicious sesame noodles, that were to make an appearance later in the week.
An hour after arriving back in my room (one am by this point), Ariel and a friend of hers stopped by to wait before their flight in the early morning. I stayed awake with them till 4AM and as a result was was too tired the next day!
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.