Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 168/169
January 18, 2013
Tuesday I was invited to the Phi Psi date night and went urgently looking for a date. To my luck I ran into a good friend from Penn Singers, Lauren Nagy, whom I asked and who agreed to accompany me. Physics in the morning was difficult again. I’ll be most glad when I’m done with electromagnetism but I think I may need to retake the course when I get home in order to be sure I’ve learnt the material well enough. After physics was my first singing lesson of the semester which was enjoyable as always. It provides me with an opportunity to have my improvement measured and the chance to improve further.
Following the singing lesson I attended the visit of the Australian Consul General to the University of Pennsylvania and heard him speak on how best to ‘bat for team Australia’. This inspired me to start a plan for an Australia student network across the Ivy League schools.
Then it was dinner and a quick change into a suit before Glee rehearsal. Unfortunately I could only linger for twenty minutes before dashing outside to run through the rain to the Phi Psi chapter house, where I met Lauren. There we socialized pleasantly with the other brothers, potential pledges and their dates before heading off in taxis to the venue. When we arrived at the venue, the first thing that struck us was the volume. The music was cranked way up high and it was difficult to talk to one another amidst the booming beats. Unfortunately this detracted from the experience as a whole and resulted in Lauren and I leaving a little earlier than we might otherwise have intended. As it turned out, this was my last event with the brothers. I was dropped from the process, which was completely understandable, and returned to life as before.
Wednesday I resumed compsci classes and unfortunately this meant returning to a very large workload. I was gifted by Professors Boon and Smith with two assignments, due the following week. With much else to do besides, the familiar stress levels from fall semester were returning. In the afternoon I set about completing various logistical tasks I had left, before Glee rehearsal at 5. After rehearsal I had a meeting with two of the other TAs for CIS121 in which we planned and wrote the homework for the week. Finally getting back to my room late I began work on the assignments and passed out somewhere around 2AM.
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>