Wednesday/Thursday – Day 97/98
November 12, 2012
Today was back to the usual grind and it was harder than usual after such a long break! The work suddenly piled up again, with assignments coming in from all fronts. To top it off, by this point I was low on sleep, and had been trying to spend as much time with Dad as possible. I barely scraped through my classes today, thoroughly distracted and on my phone for much of them. I only barely made it through the goodbye, and this further stole away my focus.
The evening brought another onslaught of rehearsal and the announcement that the show had been postponed till Friday to allow us time to prepare and tech the show, which despite the hurricane, was coming together quite well. In addition, we were to add a matinee show to our offerings, and hope that the theater would fill up despite the late announcement.
Another part of my day was walk-shifting on Locust Walk, handing out flyers with such slogans as “You think my accent is awesome? Not as awesome as the Penn Glee Club Fall Show” and “Kiss me kangaroo and pickle me ginger – this is something mate, that you don’t want to miss”. Exploiting my accent turned out to be highly profitable and I managed to turn over one hundred flyers in thirty minutes. A record.
Rehearsal tonight ran again very late, with more chances to get close to everyone and enjoy the music and dance. Vanessa Lam, our stage manager and a wonderful, short, Canadian girl was having a hard time keep it all together as madness converged on the theatre, setting us all on edge.
Again, another late night of work followed and very little sleep.
Thursday was much the same, but by this point hell week was really starting to hit me. Physics and Operating Systems, my two harder classes, we both today, and I almost slept right through them. I pushed through some of my remaining work due Friday and slept an hour during the day before again, hitting the rehearsal block at 6. With Dad gone, rehearsals were even harder as I had no good excuse to take me away from the action (not that I so much regretted it). Our performance was improving radically and some of our songs were really getting to the point of excellence. Even our few dance numbers combined with Penn Dance had reached an acceptable level of performance.
Finally, at 1:03, I returned to my room, talked deliriously to Mum and Esther, a close friend back home, and got to sleep around 3:30.
Sunday/Monday/Tuesday – Day 72/73/74
October 11, 2012
Sunday was a mad rush to try to get a little more work done before the chagim started again. In particular, studying for a difficult physics midterm that was later in the week. At eleven AM I woke up to work with Jonothan on our Operating Systems project and pounded away at that for a good few hours. Anil was away for the weekend and thus lunch was lonely by myself in the apartment (Hillel is closed on Sundays) and then back to pounding out equations.
As the sky darkened I found myself worrying more and more about the physics midterm and I’d later be proven to be right in my fears.
After chag came in, as per usual, I couldn’t be privileged enough to just be able to go to shul and relax. This time it was dance rehearsal with Penn Dance interrupting what otherwise could’ve been a quieter night.
Following that I read a bit of my books and went to bed.
Knowing the difficulty of the midterm ahead of me I decided to walk and listen in on my 9AM and 5PM physics tutorials/recitations/sections. Though I felt I understood the gist of the material being presented, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to repeat it under example conditions.
Other than that my day was spent at the Hillel as to be expected, eating and drinking and of course, kvetching.
At five PM was the normal PGC rehearsal, delightful as always, followed by a trip back to Hillel for Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah (another Jewish festival again!) at Penn was one of the best simchat torahs I have had. The energy and passion were fantastic, especially in the OCP (Orthodox Community at Penn). The hakafot (dance circuits) went for over three hours! Unfortunately I could only stay for one of the three as I had a rehearsal for University Choral Society up at 8:10PM in which I was singing a Requiem Mass. Quite the contrast to dancing around the Torah. By the time I made it back to Hillel at ten, things were still going on and people were sitting down for dinner. I joined them and then got a full nights sleep in prep for the upcoming midterm.
Thursday – Day 48
September 10, 2012
BREAKING NEWS: Shaanan was accepted into the Penn Singers, the premier Light Opera/ Musical Company at Penn. As such he was partying tonight and didn’t have time for an extensive post.
Today was an all new set of classes! First up was Electrodynamics I, a post-vector calculus, Junior level physics course (PHYS320). The class was full of around forty older kids and not particularly warm and friendly. The material was difficult and the lecturer got right into it. Homework was set immediately, a series of vector calculus revision exercises that taxed my brain a fair amount. I will need to get plenty of help with that.
Next up was Operating Systems, a slightly larger class (CS380) with around fifty students. The class required an advanced knowledge of the C programming language and our first assignment was handed out immediately: writing a shell for the Linux operating system. Difficult but doable.
Finally was my random class Russian, which today went well, learning a bit more of the alphabet and the difference between the two kinds of vowels, hard and soft. Stay turned for more details.
The afternoon I coded away at the Operating Systems project, not even stopping when it was time to leave for my night activity at 6. I knew there was a second bus leaving and decided to wait for that instead.
At 6:30 I headed downstairs for ‘The Rodin Sophomore Cruise’. The bus arrived at the port at around 7:00PM and after a minute we were informed that the second bus had in fact refused to start and that we might be waiting a bit longer till we set a-sail. Half an hour passed and the remainder of the supposed attendees didn’t show. Rumours passed around and it was eventually made clear to us that the original bus too had gotten stuck along the way. Finally at around eight thirty, the last of them arrived and we finally left port. The cruise was most enjoyable and I even got to dancing, after a little prodding. Highlight of the trip was meeting a very friendly girl by the name of Stephanie from my building too and a musician by the name of Rigel from my floor.
After we returned it was quickly back to my room and, exhausted I was soon fast asleep.
<RODIN CRUISE>