I just had an exam over the internet. I was to translate a text from japanese to swedish and answer a bunch of questions within an hour. All was fine untill the second that I'm pressing the send-button to submit my answers to my teacher. Yes, at the exact second I press the button, my internet bails out on me. I have a few minutes to spare so I quickly restart my computer. Doesn't help. I slip the text file over to my USB memory stick, quickly run over to my mother's computer, start it up and her internet access is also down. I then fail my exam, and no teacher in his right mind will ever believe me.

Now, yesterday I talked more to the guy who wanted to start a business together with me. He offered to put me on payroll if/when I want to quit school. (For reasons too long to explain) I said that I'd rather finish my class first, and declined getting any money until december. Maybe I should rethink that. I barely take the time to study these days anyway, and I'll be failing three of four exams this week (not as bad as it sounds, this education won't give me a job anyway, and I can't continue studying next term).

If you're utterly failing anyway, I say go for it. You'd be saving yourself and/or your family some money. Besides that, starting early can get you additional experience.

Surely you can just re-take the assessment at a different time? Out of interest, why are you doing Japanese exams over the web? Is it part of an online course?

@Srephog: One part of the course I'm taking is translation of nonprepped material, and you basically need to have a translation tool and the text in digital format to be able to even get a gist of it (Kanji makes Japanese ten times harder than it should be). So I get the text, enter it into a tool that translates all the Kanji, and then piece the grammar together to build sentences so that I can understand what the text is all about.

I'll probably stay on the course, but it looks like I'll be dropping the ambition to pass it :P

Agreed about Kanji - I'm putting off learning the 2000-odd until I absolutely have to... it's just such a staggering number to bring yourself to start on.

It's ridiculous if they don't believe you about the internet crash.

College is over-hyped, I'm sorry I went. On the other hand, working for others is also over-hyped, and I don't want to do that again either. The second is probably slightly superior, but I think eventually you should aim to own your own business rather than working on a payroll, if only because there's more of an incentive to do your best when you don't have a steady paycheck.

You young kids with your romantic ideas!  :P

According to our profiles I'm 4 years older than you  :P

I think you were looking at his brownie points. He's 34.  ;)

Well not quite - but still not a young buck  ;)!  My apologies!