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!