Monday/Tuesday – Day 80/81
October 19, 2012
Monday and Tuesday were both huge work days!
Monday I was up early working on a physics problem set before the recitation (tutorial) at 9AM and struggled with more electrodynamics. At ten was my usual algorithms class in which we finally covered mergesort, which was good for me as I had an interview scheduled for Tuesday in which I’d expected I’d need at least one sorting algorithm.
Tuesday also had scheduled a midterm for my operating systems class, but distracted by the Physics and interview prep I hardly had a chance to study for it.
Monday night was the usual rehearsal timetable, first a few hours of Glee, followed by an hour break to catch dinner and then two hours of University Choral Society. However, I was feeling so sick at this point that I notified Joseph Ooi, in charge of the roster for Glee Club and, let him know I wouldn’t be making it that night.
Dinner was at Hillel with a bunch of the Glee Club guys including Scott Ventre, who told some fantastic stories about his prior years at college but, before he could finish I had to run off to choir rehearsal. I walked to rehearsal with Thea Walton, a lovely girl from Perth and had a fantastic catch up with her. Rehearsal was filled with my coughs and I was so glad to get back to my room and too sleep.
Tuesday was a bit of a nightmare and full of stress. In terms of the physics work, I only managed the most basic set of questions. For the Operating Systems exam I found little more time to study and the test was significantly harder and longer than I expected. After Operating System, I had rehearsal till 7PM when my interview was.
The interview was a great experience with challenging but satisfying questions that though I didn’t feel like I answered particularly well, I at least showed the way I approach questions which I thought was too my advantage.
Following the interview there was the awful 9-12 PGC rehearsal and again, I felt too sick to make it to all of the rehearsal and ended up leaving at 11PM to get an earlier nights rest.
Wednesday – Day 75
October 12, 2012
My midterm was a disaster. Probably a combination of not understanding one of the questions correctly combined with having no idea what-so-ever on how to do another of them. At least now I know where I’m very weak. Electromagnetism is hard.
My algorithms class was nothing exciting, same for Ruby. Though I feel I’m slipping behind in that one simply because I have no time to study for it amongst everything else. Penn was recently ranked the worlds second most stressful institution and I’m certainly feeling it now.
There was the usual five to seven PGC rehearsal and I went for a lovely interview with Andrew, the baritone section leader, after, before getting back on to work on the operating systems project with Jonothan. Far too many hours had been spent on it with far too little progress and the due date was fast creeping up on us. Due to his illness we weren’t able to progress as quickly as we would’ve liked with me taking the brunt of the work for the first two weeks of the assignment period.
This heavy assignment work meant that doing anything for my birthday around that time was pretty much out of the question and the clock passed midnight with me hardly noticing. Thankfully a bit later Sarah notified me that I was in fact twenty one, else I might not have noticed. Then she presented me with the best possible birthday present, a video of many of the people I love and am closest to from around the world, recorded on YouTube each sending me a personal message. Another highlight was skyping with another close friend from Melbourne who along with a friend had sent me a few delightful presents. Quickly unwrapped to much joy were:
A Disney Song Book
a Binary Tie
and a fantastic tshirt!
These two events conspired to turn an otherwise unhappy evening into something rather nice.
Though, I was still up till far to late at night and had an early wakeup the next day.
Chassidic Philosophers
September 30, 2012
I have decided to use this space not only to post updates on what I’ve been doing but also to post the odd article or two. In this case, an article on Chassidic Jews rebelling against their communities to study philosophy in secret: Spinoza in Shtreimels
To use the provided blurb:
This past Sunday, philosophy professor Carlos Fraenkel wrote in the New York Times that “the cultural relativism that often underlies Western multicultural agendas [is] a much greater obstacle to a culture of debate than religion.” Today, in an exclusive preview from the Fall issue of the Jewish Review of Books, Fraenkel relates how his theory fared among a group of Hasidim, who gathered secretly to study secular philosophy—an activity their community views as “much worse than having an extramarital affair or going to a prostitute.”