-4

Today marks four weeks from my departure date. My half marathon is this Saturday, so I need to find a place to stay near Grand Rapids on Friday night and do a couple short runs this week. I'm really nervous. On Wednesday night, I am giving a presentation in my Comparative Development Strategies class. That shouldn't take me long to prepare, but I also have to get going on term papers. I've been doing fairly well at researching and typing up quotes that I might want to use, but I haven't gotten a solid outline or started writing either of my papers.

My awful statistics class is officially over now, which is good. The last assignment for it was a supplemental course evaluation, in which we were supposed to offer our opinions and constructive criticism about various aspects of the course. I emailed the department chair because this assignment makes up 4% of our grade, and we are graded on the quality of our responses. Given that I found the course to be a useless waste of time, I was worried that I would drag my grade down by being honest. We'll see what happens with that.

Here's my checklist from last week. I was able to cross a few more items off. The biggest things I need to worry about are 1. writing and submitting term papers, and 2. getting final exams for my TA class graded in time.

• Public Admin term paper presentation
• Comparative Development term paper presentation
• submit Public Admin term paper
• submit Comparative Development term paper
• Public Admin final exam
• Stats final exam
• grade Russian Politics final exam
• buy plane ticket to India
• get visa for India
• run half marathon

The past few weeks, I've been struggling with insomnia and migraines. My goal this week is to get a lot of restful sleep, de-stress through running and breathing exercises, and continue making progress and crossing things off my list.