Monday – Day 60
September 27, 2012
Today was a bit of a challenge in that I was trying to get all my work done well in advance prior to Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), the most significant Jewish festival of the year. Aside from my regular class hours, I was frantically trying to complete a few assignments, in particular the usual difficult physics problem sets, which can take me over eight hours to complete a piece.
The main standout from the day was a catch-up lab session with Kostas Daniilidis, a very sweet lecturer and researcher, taking my algorithms class. The private session with him was quite helpful and out of all my professors, he seemed most able to communicate the material in small group sizes.
The evening was a double rehearsal! First up Glee Club with a usual two hour rehearsal, then a quick dinner at the Hillel, followed by two hours of University Choral Society. By this point in time my voice was getting pretty sore…
Wednesday/Thursday – Day 57/58
September 24, 2012
Much of Wednesday was taken up by the trip home. I arrived in New York City at 8:15AM, the exact same time my booked bus was leaving for Philly. This meant I had to hang around for another while in order to find another bus to catch. At 9:15 I managed to find a seat and took the ride home, arriving back at 30th and JFK, Philadelphia at about 11:20. My homework for algorithms was due, given my extension, at 12PM, and I was cutting it close! I caught the SEPTA (south-eastern Pennsylvania transit authority) subway and made it to the office, sweating and puffed out, with all my luggage at 11:53. Just made it.
After that I ran quickly to the office of my physics professor to try and catch up on the lecture and work that I had missed as a result of Rosh Hashana! Though he didn’t have time for me then, he arranged to meet with me late in the afternoon. Following that I raced back to my dorm to drop my stuff off, had a quick lunch at the Hillel and then headed off to my Ruby on Rails class.
After that I headed over to DRL (David-Rittenhouse Labs), a maze of a building, with difficult to navigate corridors and poor design in order to meet with the physics professor. Unfortunately, though he knew the subject material back to front, he was not so adept at communicating it and understanding my individual issues. I endeavored from then on to find alternative help for when I become stuck.
By the time I returned to my room that evening, I was feeling pretty drained yet there was still more to come!
Tonight was the first proper PGC (Penn Glee Club) rehearsal that I could attend and, boy was it wonderful. First order of business was to collect a large stack of sheet music to learn and following that I was forced to sight-sing my way through a good number of the pieces. However, the result was pleasing and I came away from rehearsal wishing it had gone longer.
Thursday was a bit of a struggle as I attempted to understand my more difficult lectures after having missed a good few sessions of each. Other than that, nothing blog-worthy occurred till the Penn Singers rehearsal in the evening. The rehearsal was a bit of a shock, very little playing around, we went straight into the work, learning ‘What You Want’ from Legally Blonde. The song contained my only lines in the show and as a result I was quite embarrassed when going through it, I struggled a little with the timing of my part.
After rehearsal I headed back to shower and work till I received an SMS notifying me that Steph of PGC would be baking cookies for the next hour and hosting ‘newmen’. I saw this as an opportunity to get one of my newman interviews done. As part of the newman process, it is required that every newman spends at least twenty minutes interviewing every ‘oldman’ from the PGC in order to become well integrated into the club. The includes filling out an interview form, answering some specific questions. However, when I got to Steph’s that evening, it was far to full for an interview and I ended up just chilling with everyone there.
Back to the room, and my planned early night dissolved under the stress of work. So much for that.
Sunday/Monday – Day 51/52
September 13, 2012
Sunday I intended to get down to a bit of work, however Penn had other plans. Sunday to Wednesday marked audition season for the various groups at UPenn. Things started out well, tutoring a few Jewish girls in my Ruby class, helping them to set up their computers for the class, however flipping through the F/Penn program I noticed that auditions for The Penn Singers, the Broadway and light opera company at Penn were at twelve. Plucking the day, I headed off to the Platt Student Performing Arts House, just off main campus, where auditions were being held. Along with me I brought the music to “Some Enchanted Evening”, my personal audition favorite, and was soon met there by a good number of friendly theater people. I was then presented with a monologue to learn in the few minutes before the audition, playing the part of Leo Bloom from the producers. The audition consisted of me singing my piece, which went well. Vocal exercises, which went decently, and the monologue, over which I stumbled a few times. Further than that they taught me a few bars of the cast song “Hail Poetry!” which I didn’t quite get but I felt decent about it. Following that I saw that the ‘Off The Beat’ acapella auditions were in the same corridor, feeling a bit plucky I decided to audition for them too. However after a twenty minute wait outside I was informed that they would not take an exchange student due to the lack of worth in investing in my training. Remembering that other auditions were on that day too, I wandered over to Irvine Auditorium where the ‘Penny Loafers’ acapella auditions were being held. For them I sung ‘Under the Bridge’ by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and was made to do a good few minutes of exercises and vocal dictation.
I won’t tire you with the details of every single audition, however, The Glee Club auditions deserved a special mention. Testing both my rhythmic and melodic sight reading, along with my ability to box-step, I had a lovely time in the audition interacting with both the director and the other members of the club.
Monday was much the same, running back and forth between clubs and classes. In the evening I met with Google representatives and listened to them give a recruiting spiel. As if anyone needed to convince me that working there might be a good idea. Following that I raced off to the University Choral Society, a half credit class I was taking. At the entrance to the rehearsal room stood a mostly older crowd of between forty to eighty, all waiting to rehearse. This was a slight shock for me given my expectations of a student choir. However, I soon settled in and had a lovely evening singing. Towards the end of the class my friend Thea ran out and came back a little sullen. A while later my phone buzzed too and I check the transcribed voice message to find indecipherable garbage. Listening to the original I found a message telling me I had been accepted into the cast of Penn Singers and their production of Legally Blonde this fall! I raced off to meet the cast at a meet and greet in Platt and following that headed back to my room to work a little before, finally, sleep.