Prepaid student membership plan extension

The time is quickly coming up for me to renew my yearly prepaid membership to the creative cloud but as my financial situation might become a little unstable in two months before my subscription auto renews, I wanted to know if I could extend my membership an additional year early before the auto renew period. I have read on adobe's website that you can purchase an Adobe Creative Cloud 12 Month card from retailers and use that to extend my membership. As my current membership is a student one I would need to purchase the student version correct? Additionally would this process cancel my existing plan and require me to start a new one or does it just extend my current plan. I want to know if this will work before purchasing a gift card as you cannot return them. Cheers.