I definitely consider my summer language challenge to have been a success. I increased my vocabulary by over 700 words (that's just based on my Memrise/Anki work) and gained a much better working knowledge of the fundamentals of Italian grammar. Unfortunately, though, I feel it ended with a whimper. I lost steam on the last couple of weeks and combined with a death in my family I basically did almost nothing in the final week. I certainly did nothing productive! And what's worst, it was the first week since I started studying Italian that I did not have a conversation with a native speaker in Italian only. But that's what happens when the reality of life intrudes on your goals.
I am excited that I will be taking a live Italian course in Cincinnati in September. I'll be enrolling in the upper-intermediate class and working hard to get myself to the point where 2016 can really be dedicated to taking the C1/C2 level CILS examination. Over at /r/LanguageLearning the Redditor JS1755 posted his experiences taking the C2 examination for Italian and his description of it really inspired me to get back on the horse and reset my goals for the next four months.
I've got a little bit of free time where I can re-assess my strategies and tactics from the past few months and see what I need to do to really hit my goals before the year is over.