Hell Week, Part 1 – Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – Days 194/195/196/197
February 17, 2013
Sunday ten AM it began. I pushed myself out of bed and headed to Platt Student Performing Arts House to help post bills around campus. We pasted them over in every residential building, across campus, and also began social media efforts to encourage people to buy tickets to the upcoming performance of “Office Bass: A Corporate Musical”.
From there it was off to the Annenberg Theatre, our performance venue. It has deep significance to the Glee Club as we were the opening act on one of Philly’s finest stages and are thus one of only two amateur groups allowed to use the space for performance. The other being Penn Singers, the light opera company which some of you may recall, I was involved with last semester for the performance of “Legally Blonde”. Once in the theater, I unloaded my costume into the change rooms and began helping to build the set.
While helping out I was introduced to Yueyi Zhou, a member of the PGC band, and we struck it off immediately, going on a brief walk to find and help unpack the truck. After a while of talking we came to a shocking surprise that we shared a certain mutual friend. Details are a little private so again, send me a message for more info!
After lunch, rehearsals started and didn’t really stop. Dinner break was far too short, even though I was late getting back after other clubbers dinner’s arrived late and held me up too!
Rehearsal tonight finished relatively early, despite large amounts of work being left unfinished. Midnight and I was back home, getting a little work done before my two midterms on Monday and Tuesday.
Monday was a struggle. At nine, I was up and already at the labyrinthine David Rittenhouse Labs for a physics review session, after which I spent around thirty minutes with the professor trying to work around my problems. Unfortunately as was to be seen later in the week, it didn’t have much of an impact on my grades. Next up was revision for my 1:30PM midterm, so I ended up skipping Networking to get some more time in. The professor who I ran into wasn’t too worried, but I wasn’t super pleased to be missing out on class. The Security midterm was pretty easy for the most part and the two questions I didn’t know how to answer I ended up getting thoroughly wrong, but that wasn’t such an issue on midterm of it’s length and fairness.
My lab was at four pm and it went really well today! We learnt about stacks and queues using a real world abstraction: paper plates! The students task was to write an algorithm first in pseudocode and then in Java to build a queue out of two stacks. Using plates I believed helped them to grasp exactly what was going on and pretty much everyone in the class succeeded. Following that I followed up with a little theory on how to implement the algorithm using the ‘call stack’ and touched on a few systems coding details just for their interest.
My evening wasn’t much to talk about, straight rehearsal from immediately after my recitation all the way to one thirty AM tuesday. Struggles. I was a little tired at this point, however I was keeping up!
Tuesday started off as a disaster, though I didn’t realize it then. First thing in the morning was my midterm and I walked in more exhausted than I realized and this meant my mistakes on the exam were monstrous. I felt pretty good about having understood it afterwards and thought I’d managed to scrape by on it. Thus, I went to lunch at Hillel in a decent mood, before spending two hours in the afternoon fast asleep before it was back up again. I jumped up and out to do a walkshift ‘flyering’ on locust walk (handing out flyers promoting the show). I was on shift with Rigel Swavley and this meant I had an excellent time chatting as I gave away my wares. I also noticed that overplaying my accent was highly effective as marketing technique along with creating a personal connection with people as they walked by. Right from my walkshift it was off to rehearsal again. This time till two am. At two am it was late enough to call someone special back in Melbourne. Then I passed out on my bed.
Wednesday was back to regular classes but with the added pressure of a team project submission due in the evening. Thus, all my day outside of class was spent working on the Networked Systems project. Not to hard but coordinating the group was a bit of a struggle. Additionally, by this point, I was almost a walking ghost, thanks to the combined stresses of regular Penn life combined with the upcoming show. Rehearsal were running really late and the show still wasn’t quite together. All regular life concerns were being thrown out the window, sleeping in my clothes, eating poorly, things that I should’ve watched more carefully to try and make the week a little healthier. Wednesday night was another late one, well past 2AM and the next day was going to be really big. The longest stretch of singing in my life (but quite enjoyable nonetheless).
Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday – Exams – Days 137-139
December 17, 2012
I had experienced multiple exam periods before, but none so stressful as what I experienced at Penn. Possibly one of the most stressful weeks of my life and, unfortunately I lacked the perspective to step back from it.
The week didn’t begin so badly, with a few major projects due Tuesday but no exam till Thursday. I thought all was well as I’d planned ahead and completed most of the projects. Monday held two PGC gigs, both of which were pretty awesome. The first of those being a performance at the top of the Huntsman building, on the eighth floor, never seen on regular occasions by students. One could tell the event was of higher status than some of the others by the flashy catering provided and the seemingly unlimited supply of pepper steak being carved up for the guests. Our performance however, was less than stellar and I’m not 100% sure we earned our keep that time. However, we had a chance to redeem ourselves later in the evening with the President herself, Amy Guttmann.However before that there was coding to be done in the break and candle lighting at Hillel with a brief appearance by President Guttmann.
Following her speech there was a performance, as below, by the Jewish acapella group on campus, the Shabbatones.
Following that it was again, a short period of study and work before a trip to the fantastic Presidential Holiday Party at the house of the President herself.
There was a line out the front reaching a decent way back and understandably so, for on the other side the beautifully adorned building was a back garden filled with desserts and holiday treats. However, the Glee Club was sequestered to a side room to await our performance.
We waited anxiously for the entire crew to arrive and when they did, we sang our bit before spending time mingling. It was during this period that I managed to snag a photo with the President, one for the wall.
After all this hubbub I planed to work a little and then sleep early. Unfortunately, a few small issues with my code ballooned out and ending up taking me till the early hours of the morning, programming in Engineering, Moore 100. Around me students with bleary eyes were all focused on the same goal. Completing the assignment by 10AM Tuesday. Many fell by the wayside or more literally, fell asleep.
Tuesday morning I slept through most of and the evening was spent in a mixture of coding and revising. Today was also the day that the family visited Penn and I spent at least a little time showing them around before my recital at 1PM where I sang fly me to the moon. Email me for a link to that video.
Different project this time and lots of math catchup for the algorithms course.I seem to be doing this more frequently, but another significant event this past week was another interview, this time for an on campus position of ‘Teaching Assistant’ or TA (tutor) for the algorithms course. This applied extra pressure on me to do well on the exam to prove myself. The interview in fact went excellently, and the interviewer Val Tannen, had a few words with me after that were most encouraging. It was then on Tuesday I received notification that not only had I succeeded in being offered a TA job, I was to be given a tutorial/section/lab to teach because of my strong performance. This made me nervous a little but I was more than happy to accept. In the evening I went for a delicious dinner with my parents before arriving back on campus a little after nine PM to get back to work. However at around ten PM I received an SMS from JHo, my Glee mentor, wondering where I was at auditions, and then it hit me, I had forgotten my audition slot half an hour beforehand for the PGC Spring Show! The moment I received that message I grabbed my coat, some sheet music and, sprinted as fast as I possibly could, over to Platt Student Performing Arts Center where I was the last person to have my audition and, though I was a little stressed out I felt it went relatively well.
Wednesday was a non stop day of study, almost without pause and the study went well into the night where I helped out a few friends with their questions. Unfortunately for me, I never remember that when I manage to help others for an exam, I often doom my own performance….
Thursday/Friday – Day 133/134
December 12, 2012
The stress levels keep going up and up and up!
Thursday was the next major assessment in store for me with a ten minute singing test of the music I had learn for choral society. This consisted of about two hundred pages of music; Haydn’s Thereisenmasse and Vivaldi’s Magnificat, both substantial and fairly beautiful works. Thus, I spent much of today with earphones in one ear, the other listening attentively to my own pitching and music in hand, repeating certain passages over and over.
Other than that, I worked on tidbits here and there in prep for submission of a few larger project over the next week.
A highlight of Thursday evening occurred at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where small groups consisting of PGC members went around the wards to bring ‘holiday cheer’ to those who might otherwise be lacking it. And, though our singing may not have been our best and we were carrying our binders with us, people’s faces really did light up and they clamoured to hear us, some even getting out of their beds to sing and dance along.
Following that, from 7PM to 10PM was a dress rehearsal with the full orchestra for the next day’s choral society concert.
Friday was my final lecture in algorithms and final singing lesson. The singing lesson went excellently and I felt that looking over the semester I had made real progress which was a great feeling.
Friday night was shul at Shira Chadasha in Hillel. The minyan was lovely as always but still missing something compared to home. Hineni shout out to all of you. Afterwards I quickly scrambled for dinner with Aviva and Michal and a few others before heading out with Adriel Koschitzky, an orthodox soloist, to the choral society performance.
The performance I believe sounded pretty great, however I was way too nervous and started feeling sick partway through, partially due to the fact that I was struggling to hear anything other than my own voice, which made pitching somewhat difficult. However, it went well and ended well.
After the show finished I walked back with Aviva who had come to see the performance, Stephanie Li, and a friend of hers. Up to my room, I managed only a few steps before collapsing on my bed.