Let us discuss student loans.
I’m going to describe the experience of a generation through my own experience. If you come here to troll me, this is your fair warning I am not always a well mannered responsible adult, in fact I have teeth. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t raised right. I’m an ill mannered pet with little discipline and no housebreaking. You have been served.
Forgiveness
The first thing you need to know is forgiveness was always a feature of federal student loans. This is not new. It is not pulled out of a box by the fuzzy white ears.
I was reassured, that in the event life didn’t pan out as planned, in 20 years my loans would be forgiven. (A lifetime sentence). My financial aide and loans were based off my low income. My initial repayment plan was also income based.
Some people could apply for the public loan forgiveness and see an end in ten years.
In reality, few qualified for public service. Applications were denied over small details. In my case, I never had an answer. I worked about 8 years for non-profit organizations. Four were at an Adult Foster Care home and Four were as a CNA in a County owned nursing home. In any case, I never knew if they would count or not.
Only payments made while enrolled in qualified repayment programs counted towards the twenty years. I think. It gets difficult to suss out all the details now from then.
Bankruptcy
The average American, corporation and billionaire ex-President can file for bankruptcy but we couldn’t discharge student loans in bankruptcy.
You knew what you were doing.
I did not. I did not know I was racking up that bill. I knew I took loans, but I had no idea it was that much until after I graduated. That was my Christmas present in 2009. My now husband checked the mail on our way to a holiday party. And I ended up with a pile of envelopes in my lap. Nasty-grams. I didn’t even realize my interest rate was 6-7% until recently.
I was advised, then, not to consolidate and refinance them because I would reset the clock on my payments. I wanted to pay a little every month but I was advised to enter into the income based repayment plan. Strongly advised. My principal sat there compounding interest under advisement of my servicer. Now, writing this, I admit I am naive.
I never saw a total. Recently, a total was finally revealed and it blew my mind.
I don’t want to pay for your education.
Great, because I got married and my husband’s income was included in figuring my payments. He paid for my education. As it happens there’s no overcoming the compounding interest. Things spiraled out of control, as they were set up to do. But I did my best math and I’m sure the initial tuition cost was paid.
It wasn’t a useful degree. It was a liberal arts degree.
The first time I realized something was going wrong for my generation was while I was getting my degree, around 2006. I got a job at a fast food restaurant. And I was surrounded by people with degrees. The person I worked with the most had a biology degree. Later I’d work with people who had CPA degrees, sociology or nursing degrees and were doing minimum wage jobs. Educated people everywhere. Who couldn’t get a job in their field.
The jobs weren’t materializing. We were literally told to get the piece of paper and we’d have the golden ticket. But the jobs didn’t exist for us. Meanwhile, people who bypassed college were getting ahead.
I broke my body working intense labor jobs, my last being a CNA, and thankfully I have a skill from my liberal arts education I can do, I am a visual artist.
ME
How does a generation and then some find themselves in trouble like this? By listening to our parents, teachers, family and friends. By feeling the pressure from tv, movies and politicians.
For me it started early. I was going to college: the end.
At any hint of anything less than A’s I was getting the full lecture. My father was an intimidating man on his best day. A raging bull on his worst. His face was permanently flushed tomato red, he pulled his yellow hair back into a skinny tail at the nape of his neck and his eyes were wickedly blue (we’re known for the Okesson glare). He was 6’2, barrel chested and tossed cement blocks at work. He put in 16 hour days, in all weather conditions, setting up mobile homes preferably alone. My father road fast motorcycles on his days off and also struggled with alcoholism.
Drinking or not, he had a rage in him. I wouldn’t know his better qualities until I was an adult and then only briefly. The people in our town adored him, but then they liked people that seemed bigger than life. His best qualities were humor and complete acceptance of outcasts and misfits, a people collector. His worst traits were narcissism, grandiosity and anger.
Report cards were stressful. My father’s anger was something more serious than the average father’s. His lectures were repeated, often and never varied. College. Grades. College. Get the paper. Defying him was an act of self immolation. I did it exactly once (I called him an asshole to his face), then I ran full speed in the other direction.
Someone could’ve noticed my learning challenges and saved me a lifetime of confusion. An elementary school teacher noted I had some dyslexia. I found that report card much later. My father hollered at me that I was too smart for C’s.
I learned to teach myself what I needed. Homework took me longer than necessary. I was good at taking tests and being invisible to teachers. I was not good at paying attention. I was mystified by algebra and geometry. I came close to failing biology and physics. I doodled all over my notes as tool to pay attention. I did not like missing a day of school because it put me even further behind.
I was at my best in the art room. My safe place.
The school had a counselor whose job was what I have no idea. In my senior year she sat me in front of a computer and I was supposed to be able to answer questions to find my degree or technical vocation. It was art. There was no shocking revelation.
At the same time my entertainment was saturated with college bound protagonists: 10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blond and Gilmore Girls to name a few. It was a given that a high school character was inevitably going to college.
I remember President Clinton speaking about college.
I had my reservations, I am a cautious person by nature. I asked my aunt and she brushed off student loans as normal and something everyone has. In fact they were paying on her husband’s still. My doubts about choosing a major were also smoothed out by her explanation that I could take electives for up to two years of my degree before I had to choose (not an efficient way to take classes).
I internalized the belief that the arts weren’t a viable option. I was from a town where pensive watercolor wildlife prints were the pinnacle of quality art. Wolf howling in a snow storm? Weary Dear? Lonely Cabin?
I signed up for electives. Three semesters worth. I tried out everyone’s advice. Business, criminology, sociology and psychology. I failed out of my third semester. (That was a rough time). At that point I began paying on the loans I had. I mostly paid them off before I returned to classes in 2005.
That wasn’t so bad.
Meanwhile my father’s health crashed. He was diagnosed with cancer. He was having long term treatments but he also gave into his substance abuse issues. He kicked me out for his personal space and love life.
Super.
I lived out of my car some. After a few arrangements didn’t work out I ended up in a place of my own. Full time class load, working as many hours as I could handle and full rent. By then I realized my invested time and energy would result in a degree if I went into a program suited for me.
I landed in the visual art department. I found the classes to be engaging and time consuming. Drawings take time, paintings take time, memorizing slides takes time. And my dad, now sans drivers license and in a heap of legal trouble, needed to move in with me.
I was determined despite every obstacle set in my way, to finish my degree.
I had no idea how the financial stuff worked. I did what the school told me. Filled out the forms. Signed my name. I had nearly paid it off once before, right?
It was seven months after I graduated before the loans came in from the servicer. My stomach dropped like it was a roller coaster car. The envelopes in my hands, each worse than the last. This was not what I expected.
My father always said my brother and I would inheret his property. I fantasized about selling to pay off my loans. In reality, not only would I have started a feud with my brother, but it would’ve been throwing away land. After putting a dent in the principal, the interest would’ve backfilled like self leveling cement.
It affected my ability to take out a loan. Despite having great credit and enough income, my bank wouldn’t give me a car loan because of my debt load. I needed a co-signer.
I was resigned to paying until death. It was the endless multiplying number. Straddled with this load I never dared do more than dream of continuing my education.
The Debt
A generation was promised a future that didn’t come. Education was a golden ticket to nowhere for many of us. When the time came, entry level jobs wanted impossible years of experience. The competition to get minimum wage jobs could be fierce at times.
I feel like somewhere there’s people who made money off of us. Off of making student loans as predatory as they could. If the people who don’t agree with this administration’s student loan policies could focus their anger in the direction of the people responsible…
I am thoroughly tired of the binary thinking being peddled by specific news outlets. Each of us has benefited from one government program or another since birth and it is a sickness to be angry when we take care of each other▪️
Very well written, Taryn.
Because of Brandon and my retired stratus, my loan "payment" is $0.00 each month. And this counts as a payment. I think I have four more years to go at that amount. Unless the fascists are elected and the deadbeat dirtbags like me are told pay up or else. If "else" is incarceration, it's toodles USA.