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.
Friday/Saturday – Day 106/107
November 18, 2012
The march of stress continues. I didn’t manage algorithms today and my singing lesson was cut short due to complete exhaustion. Though I’m equally as tired today while writing this, it’s for entirely separate reasons that I’ll get to later. Friday’s show ran well, nothing special there, and managed to get to shul and dinner as well.
Shabbat itself was somewhat more tiring with a Glee Club alumni reception alongside the shows. At least my now I was close to a few cast and crew members. I hardly managed to eat all day as too much was happening, and I know it wasn’t wise but in this case there were just too many issues. After the show finished late motzei Shabbat we began load-out/strike, clearing the set and packing up. This took a great many hours, and we were called from around eight PM to three AM. At three we had the cast party, however with all the work I was behind on from the last two weeks I couldn’t really partake part in it very fully and only stayed for a short while before heading to bed for what I hoped would be a good while.