Good Morning my Dear Friends and a happy post-Thanksgiving.

I am entering my last week of Michaelmas Term! This means that there is at least one essay crisis per day, sometimes two :P

However, the golden nugget waiting at the end is a trip back to Harlaxton. I am very excited to see the wonderful Ralph and Judith Poore again, my host family of yore, and to see the manor, the Baker students there now, and the lovely people still teaching and working there. It will be magic anew.

Then I come back to Oxford to study and in 9th week I have a thesis meeting to discuss what sorts of quantitative regressions I want to use to analyze my macroeconomic data. However, that sort of requires me to have some macroeconomic data. Luckily the meeting is at the end of the week, so Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be devoted to finding all of the indicators that I want. I am really excited to get started on the development of the thesis, how the question and case study will be structured, and to organize the research. I am reading Case Studies and Theory Development in full to prepare properly for the thing.

Being in the last week of term also means that my 24 day Christmas countdown is soon upon me. I will be reviewing my 24 sets of seminar readings that have been assigned this term, one on each of the days (1-24) in December before Christmas. And my present will be passing my course. Fingers Crossed! This probably means the blog is about to get academic in the next few weeks :P I also need to write a paper for an application on the importance of measuring the qualitative outputs in education and how this can be achieved globally. I was considering revising another paper for submission, but then realized that would be a crazy task, so that is in cunctation (or might get delegated lol).

This past week was very pulchritudinous. St. Hilda's put on the Guest Night which saw the return of some wonderful alumni and other friends of the college. There was a magnificent Thanksgiving dinner. I was able to attend three fascinating seminars, one on Afghanistan, one on institutions in the Middle East, and one on Syria. All in all I think it was quite a successful 7th week, given the circumstances.

Ok, I think I am off to go write my Global Governance essay. Wish me luck!
Will