Monday/Tuesday – Day 252/253
April 16, 2013
As my workload ramps up, my time at Penn is slowly ramping down. I’ve started chucking out the things I don’t need and have arranged face to faces with a number of people I still stand to set things in order with. Though it may seem early, there’s a lot to be done in between now and the start of May. It’s a particularly weird situation because Penn is now starting to feel like home more than home in Melbourne. Probably a good thing I leave now then.
Monday things were pretty crazy as always. This was heightened by the fact that I was literally panicking over my Physics exam. I skipped all my classes and recitation was a little underwhelming, I just didn’t have the energy to make it as wonderful today. Hopefully my students forgive me. I count two sub-my-standards labs thus far in a semester of 14 weeks.
Monday night I took some time off the study for a Glee Club Gig at the Kimmel Performing Arts Center, the most important arts venue in Philly. We were performing on a sidestage for the acapella festival and ran a forty-five minute set. It was actually quite enjoyable but my mind was elsewhere. From there I raced back for a short dinner at Hillel before it was off to the music buildings for Brahms’ Requiem rehearsal. That went ok but again, my mind was on Maxwell.
I got back to my room and felt sick stressed and exhausted so I decided better to go to sleep early and work on the physics in the morning.
Tuesday I was up at 6:30AM studying for the test and things weren’t actually going as poorly as the could’ve. I was understanding the material even if I wasn’t exactly capable of drawing many unique solutions or new thoughts from it, at least I had the basic idea of what was going on.
A few hours later I headed off to the exam itself and sat down. From my perspective the paper was a disaster. Questions I had no idea how to solve and important things I had forgotten. I did my best and managed at least to write down a few things for each question on the paper, hoping it would be enough to scrape by.
My afternoon was planned to be a bit more free but unfortunately, the stress that I had caused myself with physics got the better of me. By now I was thoroughly sick. I went to my singing lesson with Brian and had to cease after my warmups. My body just wasn’t taking it. Unfortunately, the repercussions of the exam would last a while.
I went straight to sleep, only waking when it was time for another Glee gig. This was another internal awards ceremony for esteemed alumni. I could hardly croak out a tune, and during the performance my voice cracked audibly. I should not have been singing. Thankfully, Scott Ventre had my back, covering me as a baritone despite his lovely tenor sound.
Following that I escaped briefly for dinner at Hillel before it was back with Glee for the conclusion of board elections. Things were tough and tight but ultimately, I feel that strong candidates were selected for all the positions.
Finally, just past midnight, I was able to get to sleep, and try and aid my aching body.
Sunday/Monday – Day 237/238
March 29, 2013
Things didn’t stop going well over the next few days. Some of my best times at Penn. Sunday was a full day of work. After I woke up that is. Coding till so late the night before, didn’t exactly give rise to a full day of awakedness. Bits of group project work and lots and lots of physics. I didn’t realize that much of the physics on the assignment we hadn’t actually covered yet and so I spent hours trying to figure out what was going on, with much futility.
Had a new ‘chevruta’ (learning partner) in the evening with Shlomo Klapper, that was most fulfilling. Thankfully too, it came with dinner and bagels, the last chametz of the week!
After that I headed to Kiwi with Yoni Weider and Ariella and we had a good chat over some real US style frozen yogurt!
I didn’t sleep much that night, had another minor argument with someone and it just kept replaying in my head. I’m not a fan of conflict.
The next morning I was up early for minyan, siyum and biur chametz (prayers, meal and public burning of bread), in preparation for Pesach (passover). There was a small crowd there but everyone got very into it all. Had a short day, with a midterm that went excellently despite little to no study for it. I then packed by bags, walked with Aviva through the rain to drop off her homework and ran to the car where her dad was waiting for us to take us to her place.
The details of what happened next I’ll leave to further posts, but needless to say my next few hours were exciting.
Thursday/Friday – Day 191/192
February 11, 2013
Today was the last physics lecture before our first midterm. Terrifying. After lunch I tried to study, I really did, but sleep overtook me and I ended up taking a four hour nap, waking only at around 6PM at which point I headed over to Hillel for dinner. Thankfully, now I was a bit better rested and this made me more productive later in the evening.
I had a brief team meeting with Charu to discuss our networking homework (which I had already completed most of) and then set to work finishing up a few little things with it.
Friday was spent working on revision for my midterms, both physics and security, and catching up a little more on all the missed sleep. In the afternoon we had our staff meeting, which went relatively well though there were definitely a few rocky moments. Teaching in an academic environment is harder than I thought. Though I’m used to teaching in an informal setting, the requriement of communicating more content places restrictions around the use of more creative educational media. TA training was fun-ish but mainly useless as always and I had to run out a little early. Friday night I led services (ma’ariv) at Shira Chadasha and it felt good to get back in the rhythm a little. It went fairly well, but I needed a bit more beef on me to prevent it from being too draining. Afterwards, the usual dinner with Ariella, Aviva and Michal made it a lovely evening, and when I finally got back to my room I was well ready for sleep.