Character Improvements, or, How much time is spent on training up? Options

[tricwebs]

A few questions for the experienced GM's out there (that is experienced with SR, my experience is mostly with GURPS). The rules for training up skills (and spells/complex forms) list the interval for the extended test. Just how much time is actually spent on this? If the interval is one week, is that all the character is doing every day for 7 days (which I find a little hard to fathom, especially with the new "rules" for sleep deprivation) or is that just for a "standard" work day (8-10 hours a day) every day for 7 days (or 5 days)? If the interval really means that's all the character is doing, then I hope thay have paid up their lifestyle for a while as the higher level skills (especially skill groups) will take longer to train up (and let's not even discuss spoofing lifestyle, because then a character could never maintain a lifestyle and train a higher skill at the same time). Or, could an interesting houserule be to make the 1 week extended test represent 80 hours of "study time", and just let the characetrs make the extended test roll when they've accumulated enough hours of study (I know, more to track, but like I said I'm used to GMing GURPS)?

[raggedhalo]

I rule that they can't do anything of in-game importance while they're learning. So a week might only be seven eight-hour days but they can't be doing shadowruns, hunting for gear or designing ally spirits during that time. I track when runs occur to make sure that the lifestyle costs come up often enough.