Thanks everyone for replies.
Gonna stay home for christmas break, meditate as much as possible and see where it gets me.
A question about technique. The kind of meditation that makes the most sense to me is this: continually trying to widen awareness to encompass everything, while paying attention to the three characteristics, without any verbalization (there's hardly any discursive thought when I'm really "in the zone" with this). I don't know what this type of meditation is called. This feels effective while meditating, in that I'm focused and present and seem to have a good moment-to-moment handle on anicca and anatta. The challenge is continual widening of perspective to include more and more of what seems to be the watcher or self in a detached equanimous manner.
Neither noting nor scanning appeal to me at all, they seem frustrating and distracting from the actual task of observation. Especially with scanning it feels like I'm wasting effort learning to control attention in precise ways which have nothing to do with the eventual goal of observing everything (as I understand high EQ). Nevertheless I had obvious progress with scanning at the Goenka retreat.
Is this a suitable kind of meditation to use? Or am I secretly actually doing samatha or something (my greatest fear

)?