Hello!
I'm a university student pursuing my Master degree. So far I have been doing pretty well with my studies, pursuing one degree after another in my field, but I feel like I'm abandoning my teenage dream of a one-year visit to Japan. When I was getting my bachelor degree I applied for a student exchange program to Japan, everything went smoothly, but Covid ruined it for me. After that I hoped that when I would be getting my master degree I would have a chance to apply for the student exchange program one more time, but this time I failed. At my university only one person can go to a Japanese university per semester, I had a general academic score of 96.5 with bonus scores from my academic achievements, but I still failed (guess the competition is THAT high, as everyone grew hungry for the student exchange programs after COVID). I got very upset, but I had only one year of studies and after that I would start job searching (to be honest I was even planning on starting working during my last academic year). And once you start working, getting a gap year to fulfill your dream becomes even harder as it may ruin your CV (in my country there is no such tradition as a gap year). So I decided to take a leave of absence at my
university (my university easily gives permission for it if my leave has educational purpose including language courses abroad) and apply for a language school in Tokyo for one year. Japanese is my second foreign language after English and I was studying it at university courses and right now I'm at a level of finishing N4.
So after explaining my situation, I am wondering if taking a leave of absence is a good idea to fulfill my dream. Money is not a big problem in this case, it's more about the fear of loosing a year when it comes to my CV.
by sowhat_eichi