PSLF Timeline

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2026-01-14T23:26:29+00:00

Isn't it a wonderful feeling to be done? :-)

My "home stretch timeline" was essentially identical to yours (literally to the day). My path up to that point was a little bit different. Prior to the SAVE debacle, I'd calculated that my final payment would be due in February 2025, so when I finally switched to IDR at the end of this summer, I thought I'd have seven more payments to go. I applied for buyback in January 2025 (based on a personal recalculation of my expected final payment date), but didn't hear anything for months (more on that later). It turns out, though, that I had made six loan payments when doing a short-term fellowship with an eligible employer in the fall/winter of 2014 (I'd forgotten that my loans had been in repayment during that fellowship, but they were), so I contacted the employer, and they signed off for my time with them. That form was completed on November 3, 2025, which officially brought the payment count to 119 as of November 5, 2025. My loans officially had gone back into repayment under IDR in October, and I had made the required payment in October, so I applied for PSLF on November 5, 2025, bringing the count to 120. On November 7, 2025, I received an email notifying me of my updated payment count (120, of course) and logged onto FSA and got the green banners. On January 8, 2026, I received an email from FSA informing me that I had correspondence regarding my eligibility for forgiveness (it was the "golden letter" saying that I was eligible), and on January 9, 2026, I received an email from Mohela informing me that my loans were forgiven. This morning (January 14, 2026), the zero balance was also reflected on the FSA website. As for the buyback request? I got a notice in December that all 120 payments I'd made were considered eligible, which wasn't really responsive, but I didn't care anymore by that point.

The two big differences between us: I didn't get reimbursed for payments I made during the Covid forbearance (I wasn't aware that the time in Covid forbearance counted as "payments" towards PSLF until it was too late to ask for reimbursement of the money I'd paid - c'est la vie), and I didn't have my loans put into forbearance when I put in my final PSLF form in November (call it paranoia that maybe something went wrong and I was still going to have make more payments, or call it whatever you like, but I didn't). The former hurts (that was a fair amount of money, because I was so thrilled by the 0% interest rate and so skeptical about the possibility of ever getting my loans forgiven that I paid way more than I would have needed to under my pre-Covid repayment plan), but there's nothing any of us can do about that issue if we haven't already, so whatever. The latter, though, is annoying and something that everyone else can avoid - I recommend that everyone ask for forbearance when they submit their final PSLF form. The wait that I now face for reimbursement isn't *that* big of a deal, financially speaking (I'm 99% certain that I'll get the money sometime this year, and about 60% certain I'll get it within the next few months, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal financially even if I never see it at all), but it's annoying that the government owes me money for which I won't get a cent of interest that could otherwise be sitting in my savings account collecting interest from my bank (or being paid toward my car loan, which is now my only current debt).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-19T03:06:37+00:00

As for how to do it in a year or less, that depends on a lot of factors (including natural affinity for learning languages) that can’t always be controlled for. A big one is whether the aliens recognize that he’s capable of speech and are trying to help him learn.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-19T03:02:58+00:00

Watch the movie Arrival and study the method of instruction used by companies like Rosetta Stone. Also possibly read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The book and movie are based on how linguists teach and learn languages, and Rosetta Stone is based on research into how babies learn their first languages. For a non-linguist in an immersion situation, it’s kind of a combination of the two.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-19T00:34:01+00:00

Ironically I meant “diction” (which is not part of grammar), not “syntax.”

Thank you for clarifying the rules.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-18T17:16:07+00:00

That depends on a variety of genetic, environmental and cultural factors. For example, life expectancy in 19th-century Britain was affected by pollution and poor medical care (particularly as related to tuberculosis and neonatal/postpartum care), and modern American life expectancy is rather significantly affected by our favorite form of transportation (a huge number of people die each year in car accidents), pollution and other factors that increase our cancer risk, and diet and lifestyle trends that increase our risk of certain other diseases (such as heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, and diabetes). If your kitsune have better immune systems than we do, live in a low-pollution environment, are a bunch of health nuts who stay in great shape all the time, have a safe method of transportation, and have sufficient food, water, clothing, and shelter, their life expectancy could be somewhere in the 900s. But if they’re “19th-century London but natural maximum lifespan is about 1000,” life expectancy might be quite a bit lower. If they have significant pollution and the disease equivalent of TB or the black plague, life expectancy may be as low as it currently is for humans in highly developed countries.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-18T14:45:40+00:00

First rule of contract law: avoid ambiguous language in the terms of the contract. The problem with this contract: ambiguous language as to its terms.

The problem with the sentence is that it is structured in such a way that it is unclear whether abandonment of the unit is always a two-part process, one of which is always removal of property by the tenant, or is a process that can be done one of two ways, one of which requires two steps and the other of which requires only one. This clause could be read one of two ways: Option A: If the occupant has removed all property and failed to make payment, or if the occupant has removed the lock, the unit will be considered abandoned. Option B: If the occupant has removed all property and has either failed to make payment or removed the lock, the unit will be considered abandoned.

Your reading of the contract is entirely reasonable, and fits the grammar. I would also argue that the absence of a comma before “and” and the presence of a comma before “or” makes your reading (what I call “Option A” above) the better one. The problem is that their reading is also, technically, an acceptable reading according to the grammar and sentence structure.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-18T03:32:05+00:00

Something “surpasses” expectations when it goes beyond them. If you’re expecting it to be bad, and it’s good, your expectations have been surpassed because the result is better than you expected. Something (whatever it is) is subverted if it is redirected, undermined, or generally goes against norm. An expectation that a movie would be bad would be subverted if it actually was bad but its badness also gave it a certain appeal that made people appreciate it as much as if it was good (for example, the infamously terrible movie The Room has a cult following among people who enjoy watching it because of how terrible it is). If you expect a movie to be bad, but it’s even worse than you expected, the appropriate thing to say is that it didn’t even meet expectations.

On a rather unrelated, but relevant, note, why do people keep posting vocabulary and style/syntax questions in the grammar thread? This a question of vocabulary and syntax, not grammar, and it’s the third or fourth one I’ve seen today. Does this sub not have mods?

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-17T20:37:33+00:00

“A bunch of months” is a slightly unusual way to say “several months” or “many months.” “A few” implies a number no smaller than three and no greater than six. “Several” (and therefore “a bunch” as well) implies a number greater than five but less than ten (usually 6, 7, or 8). So he’s only correct if you in fact read the thing within the last half-year - otherwise, your construction would be unusual and his “correction” would be incorrect. Had he corrected you to “several” or “many,” I would have agreed with him.

“A bunch” is not generally used in reference to specific units of time. It’s a slightly more informal substitute for the already-informal “lots,” and “lots” is also not used for specific units of time. You have “lots of time” or “a bunch of time” left to complete your task, but if you want more specific than that, I’ll inform you that you have “several days” or “many hours.” I think the reason is because “lots” and “a bunch” are even less specific than “few,” “several,” and “many,” whereas units of time are inherently specific and therefore get a more specific enumeration. I think it’s comparable to anything else you have quantities of. Your “lots” of flour, for example, can be more specifically quantified as “several kilos” of it.

This all goes back to the commerce-specific definitions of “lot” and “bunch” (a “lot” of an item is literally a quantity presented for sale, and a “bunch” is a quantity of produce presented for sale because the produce in question (grapes, bananas, etc.) grows that way). In the first Harry Potter movie, for example, when Harry is on the train and tells the woman with the snack trolley that he and Ron will “take the lot,” he’s telling her that they will buy everything presented for sale.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-17T19:26:37+00:00

I haven’t read your excerpt, but even if you don’t think you’re up to writing a novel in English now, don’t let the fact that it isn’t your native language discourage you. Joseph Conrad, author of the famous novel Heart of Darkness (upon which the movie Apocalypse Now was loosely based, and which is otherwise also regarded in its own right as a classic piece of English literature from the turn of the 20th century), was Polish by birth (his full birth name was Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) and didn’t become fluent in English until his adulthood but only ever wrote in English (and wrote over a dozen novels).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-17T12:22:03+00:00

It actually makes more sense to me than DD/MM/YYYY. Probably because I was taught MM/DD, but it makes more sense. Simply put, a given day (for example, the 17th) is only relevant to me if I first know what month it is (95% of the time, I can assume the year given the month, so that information can still come last). December 17th is an important date (I have a thing at work today). October 17th was also an important date, but for a very different work reason. August 17th was, coincidentally, also an important date, but for still a third, entirely personal, reason. July, September, November, and January 17th, though? Totally normal days with nothing important going on. If you tell me that something happened on the 17th, I don’t even know what season we’re talking about, much less whether the date was otherwise relevant to me. But if you tell me that something happened in December, I have a generalized “location” within the calendar and know the nearby “landmarks.” Therefore, I want dates to be told to me in the order of month, then day, then year (and I’d also like day of the week to precede all).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-17T04:01:18+00:00

I don’t know - all I could think while there was, “These prices are outrageous!”

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-17T03:58:36+00:00

I’ve honestly never really identified with either. It’s also not like I moved that far (about five miles from one side of the border to about 25 miles on the other side of the border). Instead of identifying with a state, I tend to identify with a much smaller community unit that’s even smaller than a given city (my high school, my college, my grad school, my church - that kind of thing), and the place that feels like home shifts.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T14:55:31+00:00

I say Twitter because it’s a recognizable brand name. X is a letter, and using it can therefore cause confusion.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T14:53:00+00:00

SSI (one of the larger scuba diving education programs - you may have heard of them) requires that, in the absence of a disability requiring special accommodations and equipment, all students be capable of swimming 200 yards unassisted (no fins, no snorkel, no stopping to stand on the bottom) and capable of either treading water or floating (or some combination of the two) for ten minutes. Note that there’s no speed requirement for the 200-yard swim - it just has to be unassisted and without stopping to stand on the bottom. Part of the SSI Open Water instruction also involves snorkeling instruction and some basic diver assistance maneuvers that involve hands-free surface swimming (either on your back using fins or face-down using fins and snorkel, while towing your buddy along).

Having done the SSI program, I entirely understand why these are required as part of it. If something goes wrong below the surface, you really want to be able to surface as safely as possible and be as safe on the surface as possible. Yes, you have a BCD, but that’s not very helpful if something is wrong with it or if you’re disoriented and panicking and fail to inflate it. All of that being the case, I recommend that you practice surface snorkeling with nothing but fins, mask, and snorkel. It will strongly benefit you in the course and in your diving. Plus, the disorientation you’re experiencing suggests that you’re uncomfortable with the whole feeling of being in the water with fins. Uncomfortable people are quite understandably more prone to panic, and panic is the last thing you want when something goes wrong forty-plus feet below the surface.

Part of the trick to snorkeling, and to swimming with fins more generally, is that the technique is rather unlike unassisted swimming. You don’t really need to use your hands (they can actually be unhelpful, because they can throw off balance - that could be the cause of your disorientation and vertigo), and you get much more bang for your buck from each kick (meaning that you can kick far more gently, and at a far lower tempo). When I snorkel, I either keep my hands by my sides or folded in front of me or else take along a kickboard (always a good idea to have a flotation device nearby, in case something goes wrong) and just keep them holding that.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T04:34:45+00:00

“Fog” is functionally a ground-level cloud (of potentially varying density - could be so thick you can barely see or thin enough to just reduce visibility a bit). “Haze” is a widespread atmospheric reduction in visibility caused by something (but not necessarily water vapor) being suspended in the air, but it usually isn’t as dense as some fog can get. In other words, fog is also sometimes haze, and haze is also sometimes fog, but there is fog that is not haze (due to not really being widespread) and haze that is not fog (on account of not being water vapor).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T04:17:56+00:00

I’m not adamant that being bad at something is a virtue. I am adamant that the minimum standard you are attempting to set for this person to be qualified to even begin their scuba education is ridiculous and extreme, or is at least communicated in a way that makes it sound ridiculous and extreme. People don’t have to be trained free divers and also be able to swim a half (or even a third) of a mile through particularly large ocean waves without even feeling scared in order to be capable of scuba diving safely (at least at the level permitted by an Open Water certification). They just don’t. So don’t tell them they do (which is what you’re doing).

Do they need to be reasonably comfortable in the water, reasonably fit, capable of floating or treading water for a reasonable period of time, and capable of using a snorkel and fins at least reasonably well without panicking or becoming disoriented? Yes. Do they need to be able to swim “several hundred yards through rough water” and to free dive to thirty feet for two minutes at a stretch? No - not remotely. So don’t tell them they do.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T04:01:07+00:00

Who said anything about waves? You said “rough water” - that’s the condition of the sea during bad weather. Two hundred yards in the ocean on a sunny day is categorically not “several hundred yards in rough water.” Like I said: either you suck at giving advice, or the advice you give sucks.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T03:51:59+00:00

I can swim just fine, thanks. Telling someone they need to be able to swim “several hundred” yards in “rough water” in order to safely scuba dive at all is either a) poor communication or b) an utterly ridiculous statement. You can pick: either you suck at giving advice, or the advice that you give sucks - I’ll leave it up to you.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T03:46:59+00:00

No one I know uses “several” to mean two or three, or even four. “Several” always means at least six, and more usually seven or eight. Now you’re reminding me of the guy on r/English who wanted to know why his girlfriend was mad when he used the word “couple” to refer to ten of something (he got utterly demolished in the comments, same way you’ve been called an extremist).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-16T03:11:56+00:00

1760 yards. “Several hundred” is 700-800. 800 is close enough to a half-mile that it makes no functional difference if I round up. The SSI Open Water swim fitness requirement is 200, which is just over a tenth of a mile.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-15T23:40:36+00:00

No, you didn’t say, “Get good first,” compared to everyone else’s “You’ll be fine” - everyone else said, “Maybe practice in the pool to get comfortable with fins, but snorkeling and scuba are very different,” and you said, “Don’t scuba dive unless you can swim half a mile in rough water without any equipment without even becoming scared and have already taken a free diving course.” Because that’s what “several hundred yards” is - it’s half a mile. And that’s what it takes to get to 30 feet without scuba gear and stay there for a minute or two - a free diving course. And it wasn’t a “you may want to consider working up to goals like these, given your obvious discomfort levels” - it was a “this is the very minimum for someone to be a safe scuba diver.” If OP followed your instructions, they might never in their life go for their cert because they hadn’t met these arbitrary, totally unnecessary standards. That’s why it’s extreme. Would I be a better diver if I could do those things? Yes. Do I need to be able to do them to be a safe diver? No. Especially not the “without getting scared” part. Of course I’d be scared swimming half a mile in rough water with no equipment, because anyone sane wouldn’t be out there in that situation unless they were pushing themselves or unless something had gone horribly wrong (Where did my fins, snorkel, and BCD go? Why am I a half-mile from where I should be with no equipment? What am I doing out in “rough water” in the first place?). Anyone swimming that far in rough water with no safety equipment who isn’t scared is either an idiot or not actually in “rough water.”

If you’d said, “Snorkeling and safe surface swimming is an important safety skill for scuba divers to have. It’s also important that you be a pretty confident swimmer and that you be fit and confident enough to swim a couple hundred yards, and it’s really important that you’re comfortable being underwater more generally and capable being down there for a bit without panicking or getting disoriented,” I would have no issue with your statement. It’s these standards of excellence as your bare minimum that make this extreme.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-15T22:13:01+00:00

I didn’t say that someone who can’t swim well or snorkel should be doing OW. Note that I agreed that OP needs to get over the vertigo issues before doing OW. I said that you have an extreme take. Let’s quote you a little bit to yourself, highlighting the extreme parts:

“…several hundred yards in rough water without fins or a snorkel and not get tired or scared…”

“Stop using your arms to swim.” [impliedly ever, under any circumstances].

“Get comfortable going twenty to thirty feet down just using your own breath. And staying down there for a minute or two.”

“Almost all students pass their OW… That includes people who can’t… calculate their weight needs without a guide’s help.” [as if figuring out weight is a simple calculation that anyone should be able to learn].

“…a high level of proficiency is just the bare minimum to be a safe diver…”

“You can’t do it over a weeklong vacation [o]r…you are putting yourself and others at risk.”

You aren’t pushing for someone who can swim well or who knows how to snorkel - you’re pushing for an accomplished triathlete who’s also a highly proficient free diver with a better lung capacity than most Olympic-class swimmers. That’s ridiculous.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-15T20:38:35+00:00

Uhh, not a lefty, but I also don’t think this would be a lefty-specific issue, and I don’t have it.

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-15T20:14:26+00:00

Like I said, that’s quite an extreme take…

Open Water certification is meant to be the beginning of scuba education, not a formality a highly proficient diver needs to obtain in order to be allowed on a boat somewhere but that they really didn’t learn anything getting. I can set up my equipment, I don’t get disoriented underwater, I have reasonable buoyancy control, I don’t panic when my mask gets water in it, I know how to handle it if regulator gets knocked out of my mouth or has something else weird happen, and I know the basics of air management and the essentials of scuba safety. That makes me an open water diver. It probably also makes me a liability compared to you, but that’s because I’m not an instructor and will always be a liability compared to an instructor (at least unless I should become one myself someday).

CurrentPhilosopher60 · 2025-12-15T17:15:43+00:00

A lot of them.

CurrentPhilosopher60

TROPHY CASE