I'd be okay with whatever.Follow

Yesterday, my mother called me and told me I was broke until January at the earliest.

The consequence of this: No possibility of going back to the UK because I couldn't live there. Abandoning my studies.

Naturally, I broke down crying and came up with a plan to transfer to Karachi University (where I'm working here) or Punjab University (where I am staying at the moment and originally wanted to study). It'd be doable because I could easily hold a part-time paid research position, get published internationally a couple of times a year (which would be better than anything I can do in the UK as an undergrad!) and get scholarships for being an immigrant and female. Totally possible.

So I calmed down. I calmed down to the point where I sat myself down and calculated how much money I had spent, and how much money I should have left. My total budget for coming to Pakistan and living here so far (disregarding any incoming money) has been about $3,000. My account balance before all this should've been about $5,000, but I saved up some money, as well, so this was definitely wrong. I called her back, only to discover that she pretty much disregarded the bulk of my money and I do effectively have a $5,000 surplus still. And 4 scholarships incoming for this over the next 9 months or so. So I'm left with increasing my savings by at least $2,000 since I started university while kind of accumulating $4,000 in student debt, but only $2,500 effectively (as per regulations on debt caps - with an assumed postgrad completion in 2015 and no extra scholarships I will exceed my debt cap after 3 years and everything after that is a bursary).

What all this taught me? I made $500 deficit in the last year. I would be okay with staying in Pakistan more permanently if necessary. And I might just go and get a job that'll help my career and get me some extra money, because undergraduate studies in the UK are a ******* joke (compared to Pakistan) and I might as well do something useful with my time that gets me a profit. And Europe and Asia have pretty good systems in place for avoiding student debt.

So I guess in closing, Ramadan Mubarak!

Keep your head up! There always is that rich shiek you can become his 14 wife and go to school on his dime! What about the research job you just had?
Would they hire you on?

It's nice to see that you've made out a plan to handle this rather than seeing you flip your **** like I've seen some of my college interns do when their parents have turned off their credit card. "OMG, how am I supposed to go to the mall today? I was supposed to go get my Louis Vuitton epi speedy today!" Oh wait, that was me.

Ahaha, yeah. Plus, Pakistan was kind of my plan for a long time and it would've made a decent excuse. But I'm fine with having a better career, and Scotland is quite nice.

My mum got upset with me a few months ago because out of 5 Scots (by birth and culturally, there are lots of Scottish born conservative Muslim types I know) I was kind of friends with, two were brown.

Everyone else I know (except some profs) is an immigrant or otherwise not really Scottish.

Damn Scots, they ruined Scotland!

I won't do it. I'll just come here in the summers, get research experience and possibly get published and get some NGO experience on the side, just in case I want to be Kofi Annan.

And yeah, in Pakistan, funds are heavily dependent on how much you get published. They tried employing some Japanese professors and gave them ridiculous money regardless and that didn't work, so I guess they learned? My department can use all the funds it can get as we're trying to upgrade our hardware and if I am to work there again next year, I want the best hardware there can be.

The funny thing is that that is a big deal in itself, but Pakistani universities also have much higher standards for passing grades than Western ones. So yeah, basically, a Pakistani degree from a real university is actually amazing.

The problem is that there is a lack of resources. Funding for higher education is very low (in fact, a lot of not so good universities might have to shut down in the next year because they're not sustainable) and even if it's there there are difficulties like not being a signatory of the non-proliferation treaty, chemical suppliers don't supply Pakistan willingly, basically.