I am suggesting that you travel to Australia or wherever you want to visit in 2018 as a tourist, not as a post-graduate student. There need be no shame in spending time in another country for please, experience an/or adventure. Getting a master's degree abroad may be over-rated. If you cannot kill two birds --foreign travel and a post-graduate degree--with one stone, it is perfectly acceptable to take on one bird at a time! Also you may find that one bird is more than enough to satisfy your appetite!
Is there a way for you to earn MORE MONEY with your current employer? For example, could you work 6 days a week instead of 5? Could you take on additional tasks in order to earn more?
Why do I ask? Well, there is someone, Gabriela Medrano, I think. I have to look her up in my Facebook friends. She travels once a year and during her trip she normally travels to several cities, often several countries.
The way she finances her annual trip is this:
**She works more than required with her current employer (HP–Hewlett-Packard)
**When co-workers in her area are absent she picks up the slack and does extra work.
**She lives with her parents so she has no housing expenses.
**She doesn’t go out to bars and restaurants with friends, or have expensive habits like drugs and alcohol, so she has no “vida loca” expense.
**She doesn’t own a car, so there is no expense of gas, insurance, parking and maintenance.
Get the idea?
Please, look at your work calendar for 2018. At this time you don’t work on Saturdays and Sundays, right? Okay, what other days in the 2018calendar (and early 2019 calendar) are there already scheduled days off? Mark all the days, on a calendar with yellow and then look for the longest sequence of yellow dates.
Do you have a certain number of paid (or unpaid) sick days in 2018? Do you have a certain number of paid (or unpaid) vacation days? Do you have a certain number of “personal days”? You can schedule those days to happen before and/or after that long streak of yellow days to create maybe a 4 week period of time when you are FREE!
See what I mean? Now…for you to be missing from your office for a month what do you need to do? Work hard! Help others by being a good example. When others are sick or need time off, volunteer to handle their workload. Let your boss know that you are available after hours, either before the normal start time or after the normal quitting time. Oh, and eat fruit because you can’t afford to get sick!
(Excerpted from a post I wrote on my website, English Voice to Voice)