I often get emails from students who need to miss a class and are concerned about its impact on their class performance. Here's the deal: Attendance is NOT required, but all the assignments ARE required. So you'll have to set aside the time to do the labs. And, as you'll see, that will be more difficult when you don't have TAs and/or other students around to ask questions when they come up or help you debug a Stata command. However, using a combination of the recorded lecture, the assignment instructions (which are a bit verbose, but hopefully clear), the Friday AM online lab session/drop-in office hours, and the Forum, you should be able to get the assignments done without showing up at China Basin on Tuesday. Many people successfully take the course as an online-only course; so can you, at least for a week!