Thursday – Day 48
September 10, 2012
BREAKING NEWS: Shaanan was accepted into the Penn Singers, the premier Light Opera/ Musical Company at Penn. As such he was partying tonight and didn’t have time for an extensive post.
Today was an all new set of classes! First up was Electrodynamics I, a post-vector calculus, Junior level physics course (PHYS320). The class was full of around forty older kids and not particularly warm and friendly. The material was difficult and the lecturer got right into it. Homework was set immediately, a series of vector calculus revision exercises that taxed my brain a fair amount. I will need to get plenty of help with that.
Next up was Operating Systems, a slightly larger class (CS380) with around fifty students. The class required an advanced knowledge of the C programming language and our first assignment was handed out immediately: writing a shell for the Linux operating system. Difficult but doable.
Finally was my random class Russian, which today went well, learning a bit more of the alphabet and the difference between the two kinds of vowels, hard and soft. Stay turned for more details.
The afternoon I coded away at the Operating Systems project, not even stopping when it was time to leave for my night activity at 6. I knew there was a second bus leaving and decided to wait for that instead.
At 6:30 I headed downstairs for ‘The Rodin Sophomore Cruise’. The bus arrived at the port at around 7:00PM and after a minute we were informed that the second bus had in fact refused to start and that we might be waiting a bit longer till we set a-sail. Half an hour passed and the remainder of the supposed attendees didn’t show. Rumours passed around and it was eventually made clear to us that the original bus too had gotten stuck along the way. Finally at around eight thirty, the last of them arrived and we finally left port. The cruise was most enjoyable and I even got to dancing, after a little prodding. Highlight of the trip was meeting a very friendly girl by the name of Stephanie from my building too and a musician by the name of Rigel from my floor.
After we returned it was quickly back to my room and, exhausted I was soon fast asleep.
<RODIN CRUISE>
Classes – Wednesday – Day 48
Class began today at 10AM and after grabbing today’s issue of the Daily Pennsylvanian (the student run newspaper) I ambled off to the engineering building.
My first class was CIS-121, basic algorithms and data structures using the Sedgewick textbook. Most of the hour was spent on administrative affairs with the lecturer going briefly into a history of algorithms for finding ‘highest common divisors’, from the simple and slow methods all the way to the recursive algorithm found by the Greek mathematician Euclid.
That finished all my officially enrolled classes for the day but, after checking out what was available, I found another two to keep me occupied in the afternoon. After a quick lunch at the Hillel (where I met plenty more people again), it was off to ‘Ruby on Rails’, a class worth half credit, covering the design and implementation of web applications. The class had a maximum allowed size of twenty people, however more than thirty packed into the room. The course got down to business straight away with a ‘Hello Lolcat’ exercise being posted for homework.
My final surprise class for the afternoon was Elementary Russian with a lovely old Russian lady by the name of Ludmilla. The class was incredibly unstructured and my classmates weren’t exactly thrilling however, I quite enjoyed it and got started learning the Russian alphabet and pronouncing all the new sounds.
That evening was our first TRAC (The Rodin Arts Collective) Music Floor Meeting. Anil and I met with all the residents from our floor and our RA (Residential Advisor) Will, to discuss the upcoming year in music and, to get to know each other a little. Following that it was up to the glorious Rodin rooftop lounge wherein an unmatched view of the Philly skyline could be seen (photos to come later). There we met the members of the other residential programs and socialized for a time. For those of you who may be a little confused, a residential program is a floor of the dormitory buildings dedicated to helping students engage with an area of interest and fostering community learning about a specific area through house funded events. In my case I’m on the musical engagement floor which features a resident musician, composer and music historian living on our floor, alongside visits to various musical events and institutions. The rooftop meeting was replete with delicious desserts sponsored by Rodin, provided by Penn Hillel and, was mainly an event to introduce us to each other and to the schedule for the next year.
Following the meeting it was back to the room with Anil to watch an episode of Breaking Bad and then to a short nights sleep.
Convocation – Tuesday – Day 47
September 9, 2012
Today the various schools (faculties) at Penn hosted their freshman welcome sessions. The event pages on the university website made it sound interesting and worthwhile enough that I decided to attend and pass as a freshman for another few hours.
At the Freshman Engineering Welcome the various Deans, Vice Deans etc spoke. Contrary to other official speakers I’ve heard in the past, the short messages they gave were quite inspiring. A highlight was the beginning of Vice Dean Sun’s talk.
“I would like to get to know you, the class of 2016. If my statements apply to you, please don’t be shy,” he began.
“Who here has saved a life?” – a few in the crowd stood up to roaring applause.
“Who here has played in varsity level sports?” – a larger number stood.
“Who here has performed in front of hundreds? Sit down. Thousands?” – it was my turn to stand and, for a moment I really did feel special.
After a few more of these he ended with one last statement: “who here has failed or flunked a big test, interview, paper or exam?” and everyone stood, bringing the class together. He talked a bit about imposter syndrome for a bit and told everyone that if they were sitting in the auditorium they were meant to be there. Though I knew I wasn’t quite meant to be there, I felt that it was important that I had come. Penn truly was a place that I needed to get to and thanks to hard work and a good bit of luck I had made it.
He talked about the fact that Penn held the rewards for a life thus far well lived, and though it felt strange to me to be receiving awards before having done anything of note, I could understand the sentiment.
The rest of the daylight hours were spent arranging my upcoming trip to Canada, meeting with immigration advisers to figure out how to stay validly on my visa.
However, the night brought a big event, ‘Convocation’, the formal opening of the academic year.
Penn Band
With a grand opening by the band and the formal entrance by the faculty and house deans, the ceremony began in fine style.
Due to the rain, it was moved to a large indoor basketball stadium that unfortunately lacked cooling and so the thousands of students and many professors sweated heavily, fanning themselves with programs. Amy Gutmann, President of Penn, gave a speech that, though well written, fell slightly flat due to the lack of concentration amongst the attendees who were far more concerned with the heat.
Amy Gutmann
A few musical performances could hardly be heard in the ‘echoey’ stadium and everyone quickly tired of them.
Penn Glee Club – Very Good
Finally, Jonothan Youshaei brought out the class of 2016 flag and the closing ceremony began.
Everyone together sang “The Red and the Blue”, Penn’s school song, replete with heart beating on the words “hurrah for Pennsylvania”.
As soon as she announced the commencement of the academic year and the dignitaries filed out, the freshman swarmed to the exit, desperate to free themselves from the warm gluey mass of bodies, radiating heat all the while.
From there it was to the President’s Dessert Reception, held outside in the humid heat, after grabbing a few desserts I spied a few freshman I had met earlier in NSO and went to say hi. This was my one really unpleasant interaction thus far. One of the girls in the group who I believed I was getting along well with took me aside to talk. She had become uncomfortable with seeing me so frequently during NSO and additionally I had sent her a few texts etc. to try and begin a friendship. She had taken it as a more dangerous interest from an older guy and asked me to stay away. It was done so for the most part in a polite manner however, there were a few seconds where she slipped up and it became quite cold and direct, rending a little tear in my outer confidence and happiness. Thankfully, we parted on decent terms, if never to really speak again and though it was an unpleasant experience, overall my experiences have been unforgettably brilliant.
With that NSO came to a close and my semester began.