Monday/Tuesday – Day 231/232
March 21, 2013
I’m really noticing now how long I’ve been away now, starting to miss home quite a lot. The prospect of staying longer for an internship while still appealing has lost a little of the shine and I’m investigating ways to come home at least for a little before starting something of that nature. Physics tutorial was cancelled today due to our professor being on travel, thus I slept in a little later. Almost decided not to go to Networking but thought it might be wise given the upcoming release of project 2. Turned out it wasn’t really worth my time, slept through most of it.
Then it was back to my room for another interview with a big tech company. I’m slowly getting the hang of them but I still wasn’t confident that I aced it. However, I did have an interesting conversation on the rate of convergence for a Taylor Series computation of the root of a real number. Turns out at the end of the day it’s slower than the Babylonian method! Who knew! This was also the last big firm thus far not to turn me down so I was pretty hopeful.
Recitation this afternoon was fun, as I violated the ‘don’t play with food’ rule by demonstrating the importance of version control using jam, candy and pictures made out of the above. The rest of the recitation was a workshop on git and DVCS.
The night was made up of my usual gruelling rehearsal schedule, no rest for the baritone in me!
Tuesday started with a pre-recorded lecture from Prof. Mele of physics as he was still away on travel. A quick break for lunch at Hillel and then a singing lesson which was pretty good today, I’m slowly improving at transitioning between primo and secondo passagio. Also had great fun playing with more of the musical subtleties in the jazz numbers I was performing. Things are going very well on that front.
Office hour, nothing special to report, but that all my funds from working so hard this semester have been guzzled up by the Glee Club. Out of all the money I’ve made, a paltry $12 remains after dues, tour payments and unexpected fees that were levied from last semester. I’m not exactly super excited about that, but I guess the price of admission is worth it.
Tonight’s rehearsal was far too short, only and hour, and was marred by a full club meeting discussing disciplinary issues within the club. More of a sad meeting than anything. It also ran substantially late. No rest for the wicked.
Thursday/Friday – Day 133/134
December 12, 2012
The stress levels keep going up and up and up!
Thursday was the next major assessment in store for me with a ten minute singing test of the music I had learn for choral society. This consisted of about two hundred pages of music; Haydn’s Thereisenmasse and Vivaldi’s Magnificat, both substantial and fairly beautiful works. Thus, I spent much of today with earphones in one ear, the other listening attentively to my own pitching and music in hand, repeating certain passages over and over.
Other than that, I worked on tidbits here and there in prep for submission of a few larger project over the next week.
A highlight of Thursday evening occurred at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where small groups consisting of PGC members went around the wards to bring ‘holiday cheer’ to those who might otherwise be lacking it. And, though our singing may not have been our best and we were carrying our binders with us, people’s faces really did light up and they clamoured to hear us, some even getting out of their beds to sing and dance along.
Following that, from 7PM to 10PM was a dress rehearsal with the full orchestra for the next day’s choral society concert.
Friday was my final lecture in algorithms and final singing lesson. The singing lesson went excellently and I felt that looking over the semester I had made real progress which was a great feeling.
Friday night was shul at Shira Chadasha in Hillel. The minyan was lovely as always but still missing something compared to home. Hineni shout out to all of you. Afterwards I quickly scrambled for dinner with Aviva and Michal and a few others before heading out with Adriel Koschitzky, an orthodox soloist, to the choral society performance.
The performance I believe sounded pretty great, however I was way too nervous and started feeling sick partway through, partially due to the fact that I was struggling to hear anything other than my own voice, which made pitching somewhat difficult. However, it went well and ended well.
After the show finished I walked back with Aviva who had come to see the performance, Stephanie Li, and a friend of hers. Up to my room, I managed only a few steps before collapsing on my bed.
Thursday/Friday – Day 112/113
November 21, 2012
Today was thankfully the last of the days of torture…
I arose today from my slumber hardly rested at all. I mas as well have not been in physics and, I missed my Operating Systems class to try and help out Deepthi and Jonothan, who, had unfortunately not completed their part of their assignment, the filesystem. Deepthi had been sick for a while and this had impacted their ability to contribute but it was still disappointing when it came time to demo our project and we didn’t have anything to show for a good 50% of it.
More than that I had made a tiny error in the code which prolonged the length of time it took for our demo to get started, another minor disappointment.
Friday we were given an extra chance to try and pass the filesystem requirement. Unfortunately we still didn’t manage to pull through and I received my first ever University fail. Not fun. Luckily though, it didn’t contribute to my final grade.
Today I also started recovering from the whole ‘balagan’ (mess) of the last three weeks and was ready to take some well deserved sleep.
The afternoon was spent with music, both in my singing lesson which, went splendidly and, with Melody Cooke, learning a little piano and teaching a little singing myself.
Shabbat dinner tonight was most enjoyable. Ariella Levine of the OCP (Orthodox Community at Penn) hosted all the Jews doing computer science related majors and minors and I got to spend time with a good number of very interesting people and meet a whole lot more.
Finally, after all that, I sunk into a stupor, not to wake for a long time.