So I Emailed the last American community college I ever went to (I should have *all* my credits in the system there, if memory serves and depending on how long they keep students' info...). First I Emailed the "info@schoolname" Email which is what I found on their website on the "degree info page". That person told me to instead Email "evaluations@schoolname" because they supposedly dealt with the degrees. THAT person told me to instead Email "advising@schoolname"! And each time is taking a day for anyone to get back to me, because the time difference makes it so I'm getting replies at like 2 in the morning here.

In Japan and the Nordics, school staff uses this funny thing called a forwarding button and just forwards your Email to the correct person for you with a note saying "Hey so-and-so could you check this out?". Washingtonians apparently still haven't figured out how to use one...

In other news thanks to spending 3-4 days Googling every kind of description I could think of for what in the world my Swedish school maybe wants for this homework, I've now managed to figure out the exact (apparently international, in North America, Europe and like Malaysia anyway — Japan has a totally different system of writing academic texts) rules for how you're supposed to write a BA thesis proposal + abstract for that proposal + the other assignments I'm also supposed to do. The thing is, my school wasn't even calling any of these things by their official or common names, as in the teachers just apparently MADE UP names for all assignments and stages of the assignments, on top of basically not even describing what we we're supposed to write, so that's why my initial Googling hadn't turned up anything at all.

What little they did say however, fits into these international rules of structure that I'm seeing, ignoring that they neglected to mention over half the things you're supposed to include and also neglected to mention everything about the structure and word count of each section. So I've messily assembled all this info into a text file, gonna clean it up today and send it to the two classmates I know who're just as confused as me, then finish the damn assignments (the only thing I actually have left is to summarize/quote/paraphrase previous research and make a works cited).

Anyway yeah. I'll get this homework done on time and thanks to all this Googling I'll probably even pass it. Looking back on my entire Japanese degree, I realize the Swedish degree is actually entirely about teaching yourself. You're supposed to Google for info on how to complete your own homework assignments because the teachers won't just teach you anything. You're only in class for 1.5-3 hours a week, compared to basically every other country where you're in class for 6-12 hours a week, so in 3 years in a Swedish school you get the same amount of speaking and listening practice as 1 year or 1 semester in a Japanese, Taiwanese or American school... You're not told any correct info about prerequisites, nothing at all about how your graduation will be delayed for a year if you study abroad, you're not told that a 2-year degree is even POSSIBLE...