Grad Diary 6/15/09

So, today was Orientation for those students opting to do a summer rotation. I chose to do one of my three lab rotations in the summer for a variety of reasons: a) I live relatively close to Philly, and so I can commute (for the summer at least), b) I would get my stipend sooner (and since I'll be commuting, save some major $), and c) I had nothing better to do for the summer, ha ha.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm planning on commuting to Philly for my lab work, at least for the summer. Once classes start, there is no way that commuting will be feasible, so I'll be moving into the city in August (almost done picking my apartment at the moment).

So I had today pretty well planned out; I had my map of campus, my train schedule, and a ton of nervous excitement to get me going.

I arrived in Philly at 30th St station a half hour before orientation started; plenty of time to catch the trolly (green line) to campus and find the meeting room. While I hadn't actually used the trollys (they go above and below ground in the West Philly area in addition to the traditional subway), I figured it would be fine, and I knew that the ride should only take about 5 minutes to go from 30th Street to 37th and Spruce, my destination.

I should note that, from 30th street to about 40th street the trolly runs underground like the subway system before returning to street level. My route would be entirely subterranean.

Boy was I in for an adventure.

As luck would have it (or rather, by Murphey's Law), the day I decide to take the trolly is the day that there are major technical difficulties as we make our way to the next station. The trolly in front of us was having mechanical difficulty, and to top it off, the driver was a newbie who didn't know what he was doing. As the minutes ticked away I tried to remain calm and refrain from constantly checking my cell phone for the time. I went over again and again in my mind where I needed to go so that, when I finally got off this god-forsaken contraption I could make my way quickly to my destination.

Eventually (30 minutes) we (literally) pushed our way to the next station...at 33rd street (yes, that's three blocks). At this point it was 9:00am, which was when orientation was scheduled to begin, and I quickly madem y way to the street level. No way I was going to continue on that nightmare. It took me a minute or two to figure out where I was exactly (I was smack dab in the middle of Drexel University) but I quickly figured it out and made my way to my orientation. I arrived there fifteen minutes late (that's right, it took half as long to walk the remaining six or seven blocks than it took to go three blocks on the trolley), and of course had to enter the door at the FRONT of the room, where everyone saw me rush in and find an empty chair way in the back.

In short, I was "that guy."

Great way to start my grad school experience.

A neat little twist to this story is that, since I came in late I wasn't able to grab my folder of orientation information, so I had to wait until there was a break to pick it up (at which point I apologized profusely). Before this, while the meeting was going on, another fellow arrived late and made his way to the back, sitting at the table next to mine. One of the administrative assistants walked over and asked for his name, then went ahead and retrieved his folder for him, while I remained folderless. The fact that this particular young man happened to be in a wheel chair probably had a lot to do with the differential treatment, which I thought was...interesting. Granted, I don't begrudge him for having different treatment because of his being differently abled - I am glad she gave him a hand, but it's not like I had any control over whether the trolly decided to malfunction that morning. This didn't bother me too much, but it did make me wonder about how we judge each other based on our outward conditions.

Anyway, the rest of orientation went fine, and I ran a few errands around campus for the rest of the afternoon (picked up my ID card, dropped some forms off, etc). I'll be starting my lab rotation tomorrow and I'm really excited, to say the least.

In the meantime, I have determined that I will be walking to work for the rest of the summer...

Take care!