13 January 2018 @ 08:40 pm
student loan  
forgot if i posted it here but since i went on exchange sweden somehow messed up and thinks i've paused/quit my studies and thus have to start paying back my student loan... at a rate of 200-300 USD a month i think it was because they've ALSO somehow missed the fact that i don't have a job (i've only gotten a student loan for one semester so far so my loan's not that big). so i had to message them a couple days ago, and they're being slow to respond.

i also found out that i can continue to go to the same japanese school taking the same classes even after my exchange year, as long as i take the JLPT and/or TOEIC and then pay tuition of about 300 USD a month i think it was. i'd just be classified as a "research student" instead. i'm going to start preparing so that if i can't find a job i can do that instead. the problem there is of course money again: we'll have to move out of our student apartment to a more expensive place at the end of my exchange year, and then i'll be paying tuition on top of that.
 
 
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[personal profile] december_solstice on January 13th, 2018 10:02 pm (UTC)
My best advice would be to start looking for full-time gigs at the 6mon mark, or at the very least, more hours. Then, if possible, take out the most loans you can, and sit on it, save money, etc. and the research student thing looks promising. Ofc, there is no better time than revisiting a lot of your projects! Write/craft for money on the side - it goes a long way.
lusentoj[personal profile] lusentoj on January 14th, 2018 12:24 am (UTC)
yeah, the problem is even if i CAN magically get a full-time job right as i walk in the door, i'll still be going to school at 150% speed (=more than full time) so there won't be enough hours in the week lol! my wife though, if she could get and handle a full-time job that'd be great...

after 6 months in japan or 6 months on the job? i'll've been in japan for 6 months in march.

right now in my free time i'm mostly just trying to improve my japanese - i can't get most jobs right now because japanese people will think my japanese isn't good enough (or general knowledge about japan isn't good enough), ex. you have to know "polite language" really well if you want to work at a café, you have to know all about publishing companies and stuff if you want to work at a bookstore. and even at a job where my japanese level is fine, it still causes problems when you don't understand or can't say what you need to say!

i'm slowly working on some books but the one that's coming along the fastest is me collecting example sentences for japanese grammar points from TV/ads/etc, and then figuring out / describing how all the grammar is used. i did a ton of work on it before i left for japan and now i think there's not so many grammar points left to add, it's just that i have to add more example sentences, weed out the bad ones, fix or do research on all the explanations etc.
sunlit_stone[personal profile] sunlit_stone on January 15th, 2018 03:28 am (UTC)
Ugh, oh no :(

Hopefully they'll get it sorted, I guess? And not prove ridiculously slow about everything?
lusentoj: 布団[personal profile] lusentoj on January 15th, 2018 07:27 am (UTC)
i think i sent the mail to them 4 days ago, so they haven't gotten the envelope yet and they're just being slow about the email (since they don't check email on weekends i'm sure)... but since i'm supposed to start paying back the loan *next month* (yeah only give me the notice one month in advance, how nice!!) it's really frustrating.
sunlit_stone[personal profile] sunlit_stone on January 16th, 2018 03:39 am (UTC)
Yeah. Ugh :(

I really hope it works out.