I am, at the moment, sitting ensconced in blankets and pillows in my childhood bedroom, a few hours before heading to work. I’ve been home for just over two weeks now, and have had barely a minute to rest. There’s been planning for trips (to Italy, next week, and across the USA with my brother this summer), there’s been doing taxes (my own personal contribution to deficit reduction), there’s been applications (for my honors thesis), birthdays (my mother’s, yesterday) and a whole lot of work in between.

So it’s been what you might call a working vacation. Tomorrow morning at 6am, I depart from Chicago O’Hare to Boston Logan, en route to my home University to visit with friends for a few days. Immediately upon return, on Thursday, I’ll head to the Palmer House Hilton in Downtown Chicago to watch my academic advisor present his paper at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA)’s annual conference. On Friday, I have two meetings in the city, and then on Saturday, I return once more to present my own paper at the same conference, this time in poster and not panel format, because I’m a lowly undergraduate.

And then, Italy! Between scholarships and plain old work, I’ve managed to afford a trip to Florence and Rome for seven days, which I’m pretty darn proud of. So there’ll be lots of Uffizi-ing, l’Accademia-ing, and Crypt-ing in the next couple of weeks.

(Don’t you love how we Americans can turn any noun into a verb? It’s a national past-time.)

After a stop in Edinburgh to see my grandmother and other aunts and uncles, it’s back to London, where the real work of the term starts in earnest. My exams will be over by June 10th, and I arrive back in London April 28th. It sounds like a short time, but I imagine it won’t feel that way: the longest 43 days of my academic life so far. I’ll keep you all updated with the revising as it happens.

In sum, then, it’s been an absolutely whirlwind few weeks, and I apologize that I haven’t had a chance to be as prompt with these updates as I could be. I can only rest comfortable in the knowledge that the extraordinary team of writers around you is keeping your demand for content and information well-sated in the interim 🙂