Ph.D. weekend

This past weekend was extremely busy but also a lot of fun.  It was Ph.D. weekend, where GSE brings its top applicants to campus to find out more about the school and its programs.  We had applicants fly from as far away as Asia to visit Penn, so we wanted to make sure that they had the best time possible.  There were a lot of dinners, programs, and activities over the weekend, and myself and the other GAs had the opportunity to help with all of these.  Rather than describing everything, I decided to use pictures to illustrate the weekend.  

This is the Penn Museum, an on-campus venue where we held a dinner and reception on Saturday night.  The Ph.D. applicants as well as GSE faculty and staff had a busy day, so we wanted to plan a relaxing and enjoyable evening for them.

This is the room in which we held the dinner and reception.  Since the Penn Museum focuses on Archaeology and Anthropology, this room had an Egyptian theme and featured artifacts and paintings around the space where we had dinner.  It was really interesting!

A hallway of paintings in the Penn Museum.

The string quartet who performed at the event.  They played both modern and classical music, which was really cool!

 I shamelessly took pictures of my food the whole time.  Our first course was Caesar salad.

I ordered the filet for dinner...it's not often that us grad students get to eat steak!

Dessert!!

Myself (middle) with Amanda and Wesley, my co-GAs in the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid.

Myself, Amanda, and Joe (also a GA) at dinner.

The lighting was dim in the room where we held the reception, but this was a group picture of our table!  From left to right:  Jesse (GA), Monica (GA), Natalie (Director of Admissions and Financial Aid), Lauren (Assistant Director of Admissions and Financial Aid), Joe (GA), Amanda (GA), and myself.  Wesley took this photo (thanks Wesley!).

On Sunday morning, we had breakfast at a restaurant downtown that was attached to the hotel where the applicants were staying.  At this point I was feeling a little under the weather due to lack of sleep, so this was my morning "cocktail" (Emergen-C Vitamin C powder mixed with water)!

At breakfast we had 4 current Ph.D. students form a "New to Philly" panel, during which they answered questions about moving to and living in Philadelphia.  They did an amazing job!  They all made us laugh as well as provided so much helpful information (I've only lived here since August, so I learned a lot from them too!).  From right to left:  Demetri, Cecilia, Kelsey, and Jinsol.

After breakfast, we took the applicants on a tour of historic Philadelphia.  Our tour guide was wonderful--he used to be an 8th grade U.S. History teacher and is also a native Philadelphian, so he had a wealth of knowledge about Philadelphia history.  This photo in front of the Liberty Bell is of myself, Andrea, and Jesse, two of our GAs.

So those pictures pretty accurately sum up the weekend!  Last but not least, I wanted to give a huge shout-out to Lauren, our Assistant Director, for planning the whole weekend so successfully.  Everything went very smoothly due to her diligence and careful planning!