Summer term almost over

The last month has just flown by. Only one lecture and one exam left in my macro class. I'm doing a little better than the class average as of now. Unless I bomb the final exam on Thursday I'm pretty sure I'll end up with a B in this class. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I like the 4 week compressed summer class. About 80-100 pages of reading every week, lots of note-taking with graphs, an exam every week. And it's nearly over! I think the same professor (Hiro Ito from Japan) has been teaching this compressed class for quite a few summers and he seems to have it all down pretty well. Today was really the first time I was a little confused during his lecture and I didn't seem to be the only one. The subject, the difference between nominal and real interest rates over time and the meaning of their slopes on a graph, is kind of weird and hard to conceptualize. I started to understand it and I think I have at least retained the point he was making about it. I've felt pretty good about my level of comprehension during this class. Although we generally do it a little bit every lecture, I wish we had more time to talk about current events. That's about my only complaint.

My other summer class, Climatology, has been super interesting. Even though I learned a LOT about the subject, I barely scratched the surface. This class has had a considerable amount of reading (all online - no textbook!) and a lot of writing assignments. I still have my final paper on the climate-related book I read and the 750 word minimum writing part of the final assignment (I already finished the other part). This class was pretty much of a last minute addition and I'm really glad I decided on this one. I felt that I was missing some very important basic knowledge about out climate and now I have it. I still have one week to turn in the final assignment and two weeks for the book critique. I've done really well in this class and the professor seemed pretty impressed with the writing assignments I submitted. I tried making them a little less dry and boring and it seemed to work. I think I'm getting better at writing, but it still takes me a long time to produce a decent paper. There is almost no way that I'll get anything other than an A in this class. Unless I just don't even turn in anything else. I'd probably still pass though.

Next up...five weeks off until fall term starts! Woo hoo! I think I should try to go camping. And maybe ride my motorcycle.