Wednesday/Thursday/Friday – Days 204/205/206
February 26, 2013
Wednesday was another chance to catch up on a little sleep. I arose from slumber at a good ten-thirty, got reading for the morning and promptly fell asleep on my desk chair. Not much of a success. A nap during Networking helped a little and before I knew it I was back in rehearsal.
I am so glad to be back in regular rehearsal, with our regular repertoire As much as the spring show was quite the spectacular to behold, the music wasn’t quite to my taste. Unfortunately though, it seems much of my old favorites have quite left my head! Ah well, time to crunch down and relearn the good tunes.
From there it was another all nighter to write some more code! Hooray.
Thursday. Physics. Team meeting. Tired. Running out of steam. Need Shabbat. Played Piano. Fell Asleep.
Friday was a grading party. Due to the completion of the CIS-121 midterm by our students, we now had 106 papers to mark (Australian for ‘grade’). This meant from 10:30AM to 3PM I was sitting in a room with the other TAs pouring over paper after paper, marking question after question and dearly hoping that my recitation did well (they did!). One brief intermission was a quick visit to the careers fair to talk to a certain employer with whom I am interviewing in the near future. I’m quite excited as I’ve had a little more practice at phone coding interviews and am now a little more confident. Hopefully it all goes well.
After grading was our regular staff meeting (not so much fun) and our TA training session (not so exciting). Though, through the TA training I have made a few friends from the CIS TA body, in particular Amalia Hawkins and Harmony Li, both lovely lower level CIS TAs (the classes, not their skills).
Friday night I was back at Shira Chadasha which wasn’t as musical as usual but still not bad and then to dinner through Hillel ‘mix-em-ups’. My table was a little uninspired but it was still nice and afterwards I spent the requisite hours with Aviva, Ariella, Michal and co.
Finally my week was over and I could head to bed for sweet repose.
Tuesday/Wednesday – Day 182/183
February 1, 2013
The next two days were most notable for the lack of sleep I received for the duration of the period. In this case it was my security homework keeping me up. Tuesday I woke early to write up my physics homework which unfortunately left me exhausted and falling asleep during the lecture that morning. Not good. The afternoon had me taking a nap and then preparing my homework for the next day in security and trying to get a start on the work due the week after. I made very little progress. Hillel ended up sucking away a fair bit of time as well and finally it was rehearsal time again, nine to midnight. I didn’t get to bed till around four AM.
Wednesday was a bit of a disaster too, given the little sleep, however I made more progress on work, even completing the security assignment for the following week. Though this was after much delirium and za’atar wedges. The day was unremarkable, practically fell asleep in my lectures, not stimulating stuff. Just networking protocols. Rehearsal in the evening was decent. A piece we’re singing that I absolutely adore is ‘The Choir Invisible” by Ron Harris (as here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ELK2Bg4XaQ) and I’m looking forward to putting up a recording of us eventually. Another highlight of today was the arrival of my tap shoes! For those reading this from Penn I can’t help but urge you to come see the spring show so that I may have an audience for my *cough* excellent *cough* dancing.
Sunday/Monday – 180/181
January 29, 2013
Sunday I was up bright and early, despite a late night of coding, to go work with Charu Jangid, a friend from my Networking graduate course. We spent a number of hours together, hacking away on some basic socket coding (networking stuff) and when it got to 2PM we decided it was getting late and that we had better stop for some modicum of food. Lunch was nice and we finally got around to chatting about a few things other than computer science. Following that we both when to our respective dorms and I worked inefficiently on both Physics and preparation for my lab the next day. Rehearsal at 5 took a lot of my remaining energy and so I was pretty tired when it came to dinner and learning at Hillel. Read a few nice thoughts on Purim while studying there and then worked till the early hours of the morning to get my Physics done.
Monday morning was another bright and early start, with a Physics tutorial starting at 9AM. After that I went to office hours with a few professors to help get a handle on some work. I planned my lab and worked out how I was going to run it. What was nice was the company as I was surrounded by fellow TAs and this gave me a chance to get to know them at least a little better whilst working. My classes almost put me to sleep this afternoon. Thankfully I had my recitation to wake me up. The snack roster worked as planned and a game of memory at the start helped to engender a sense of community amongst the class. From there we divided up into teams to work on generating accurate solutions to the lab problems with prizes for the best team. In my opinion other than a few breaks in my coherence during the proof sections, the lab went well.
Monday night meant Glee rehearsal, and though I was late, I still managed to gain plenty out of it. Following rehearsal I received some bad news via email, and a few of my summer plans were shot down, however I knew that any disappointment would be short lived. Dinner was a quick stop off at Hillel and then off to learn more of the Brahms requiem. Rehearsal was ok, though I was exhausted at this point and so my sight reading was a little off. The one saving grace for my evening was my time with Steph Li who amusingly and much to my excitement was now roommates with Alba Braso, a wonderful exchange student from Barcelona. So over the next forty minutes I had a chance to feel a little better by chatting to those two before returning to my room to work that late physics night again.