In Which I Am Overcome
September 12, 2014
Today’s discovery was really that I had been taking too much on. In between Glee Club, visiting all the career fairs, research, Hillel, involvement with computer science and a whole lot of other commitments that had not yet started, I had well and truly put myself in an unfeasible position. This was most evident from my lag in the physics course and the feeling that everything was a bit out of control.
I had a full load of classes from 10:30 to 3PM and subsequently attended the security reading group. It was good fun, but I could feel myself slipping behind on homework. No sooner had I sat down to complete some of it than it was time for rehearsal, Glee Club as per usual. When I was all danced out, a quick dinner at Hillel and then I was off again to Fisher-Bennet for more rehearsals! This time for the University Choir singing Dixit Dominus and a few Bruckner motets. Rehearsal started late and ran late. By the time I got back to my room I was wholly exhausted and hadn’t even started on my assigned work. After a long night up at the computer and solving equations, I realized something had to change.
Glee Club Never Stops
August 31, 2014
The next day was almost a sleep in, qualified by the fact that I was waking up at strange hours during the night. I was still in the fierce grasp of jet lag. I finally got up just before lunch and went to Hillel to shmooze with everyone. I wasn’t the only one who had woken up late as a good number of other people were still dragging themselves in. Lunch was fairly standard. I sat with some new freshman along with a few new people all of whom were friendly enough.
Sadly, I had to run off to rehearsal all too quickly. Rehearsal itself was fine but I struggled a little with the ‘production numbers’, dance numbers that the rest of the chorus had learnt over the past year and that I was scrambling to fit into. I tired myself out pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before I was ready to crawl into bed again.
The next day I was again up earlier than expected and used the time to talk to people at home and sort out my room. Once the sun came up, I got out of bed and went out to Hillel where they were setting up the activities fair to introduce freshmen to all the available opportunities. As I had nothing better to do early that day I helped set up and met a few new people in the process. I hung around for a few hours until yet again, it was time for rehearsal.
After a few more hours of singing, dancing and, singing again, I ditched the last few minutes of rehearsal to run off to a new graduate student event. A campus wide gnome-hunt. This was the highlight of my weekend. In a team of about fifteen new graduate students, we raced around campus following clues to pick up mini plastic gnomes scattered around the eastern side of campus. I became quite friendly with a number of my teammates and in the happy hour following the hunt met a few more. This included two other Australian/New Zealand nationals over which I was quite pleased. Afterwards, a few of the grad students and I headed over to “Tap House”, a local bar to continue hanging out for a while. After a few drinks and a pleasant breeze, the jet lag returned and so I headed back to my room and called it a night.
Arriving in Philly
August 28, 2014
The next day, I returned to the airport, sans baggage (which unfortunately had been sent through directly) and relaxed in the terminal until my flight. I slept right through my final leg, and awoke in hot, sunny Philadelphia. Finding my baggage proved to be a more difficult task as expected, due to the fact that my larger bag wedged itself in the retrieval system, delaying everyone and bringing the entire system to a halt. About thirty minutes later, after considerable back and forth, I finally arrived on campus.
Shlepping my bags over to the check-in tent in the center of high rise field, I must have appeared quite a sight to the volunteer staff. The check-in itself was relatively painless and soon I and all my bags were in my room. However I didn’t have time to rest on my laurels as I still needed an ID card, some groceries and most importantly, some bedding. Unfortunately the ID center was closed, but I managed to find some bedding, albeit ill fitting and a pillow for myself.
Barely was I done with all that before I was summoned to rehearsal by the Penn Glee Club. New student orientation events were taking place and we were to be providing entertainment for the bulk of them. In rehearsal I realized I was not quite as confident in the music as I needed to be, even the regular repertoire. I resolved to catch up on it within the next few days.
Finally, returning at about 11PM to my room I let myself fall asleep. However it was not to last long.