Four Headings and Approval

Departure in less than a week, too many important tasks remain incomplete, and there's not enough time to do them. Lack of preparation now reaching chronic and totally inadvisable levels:

1) HEALTH. I'm meant to have a medical so I can opt into the university health insurance plan. Instead of organising this months ago I waited until this week, concomitantly forgetting that I'm still registered with a GP in Oxford, the form is ridiculously complex, and there's a pretty steep cost (£100+) for elective medicals. So I'm going to do this in Budapest, or just throw myself on the mercy of EHIC and hope any accident in my first week is a massive one (fall out of window, hit by car, mauled by boar) rather than a mild but persistent migraine.

2) ORGANISATION. I've been in the process of cleaning my bedroom for a full week now. This has meant binning undergrad offer letters and eye prescriptions that date from 2007, shredding five years worth of bank statements, and trying to cram the books and clothes bought in London into every remaining corner of my room. On the plus side, I have found my National Insurance card, which I thought was lost to the world, and bedroom drawers and cupboards now open without spewing forth a pile of hastily shoved miscellanea.

3) PACKING. A big suitcase is sitting by my bed. It contains a single penny. This is a Thursday night job.

4) LEARNING. Despite telling myself I would use this summer to read, read, read, it has slipped past in holidaying, sleeping, drinking. I'm looking guiltily at an introductory textbook to IR and worrying that reading pages 1-26 does not count as sufficient background knowledge for an MA degree. I can try to sidetrack every lecture into discussing veiled Anglo-German conflicts in interwar Tanzania, but this may not be a failproof plan.

THE GOOD NEWS
I have figuratively smashed the dentist ("hello", 60 second check-up, "see you in a year"), bought a satchel, had a rather brutal and unflattering haircut. And I came second in the tenpin bowling today. And second in quasar. Always the bridesmaid...