CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm new to Civicrm, and trying to set up a member administration site for a student activity club, more precisely, a kayak club. We have two kinds of members, students and non-students (may I call them "grown-ups"?  ).
Anyhow, my problem is this:
Our membership types follow the two school terms of the year, that is, one period starts 1. Jan and runs until 31. Jul, and the second runs from 1.Aug to 31.Dec. How am I to define this? I've searched the forum and the user guide, but it seems that whatever I do, there are two possible settings, which is month - then the start date (if fixed) will be the first of the month that they "subscribe", and run for, say 6 months after that date - or year - and then the start date will be e.g. the first of January, and run until 31. Dec, which is in my case 2 terms, which again is 1 term too many..

I hope the description of my problem is not too unclear, because it really is confusing to me, and thus difficult to explain.. But how do I make two different sized terms during a year? And set the start date to a specific date, regardless if the member signs up in January or June?

If anyone would care enough to help me get started, I'd be extremely grateful!
Know it probably is a very dumb question, but the more I read about this, the more confused I get... Thanks in advance for help!