A Rather Expensive Course of Trial and Error

Or, it's what you don't know, Part 1 of 3

Every time I acknowledge my student loans is a reckoning with my 17-year-old self. Nearly twenty years after I chose a college, my student loans remain a fact of life. They feel distant now, with the servicers shored up across a vast ocean and payments possible only by internet connection.

But the dollars still weigh down my credit score, the phone numbers still pop up when I miss a payment, it remains a drain on my finances. I don’t want to devote myself to wage labor, or climb some non-existent career ladder. I’d rather enjoy my life when I can.

There’s an argument that often comes up whenever the topic of student loan debt is broached, an argument that I loathe beyond almost all other arguments. It goes, more or less, something like this: “Why didn’t you study something useful?” Insinuating that only “employable” majors are useful, that the only “employable” fields of study surround the STEM subjects, that students of STEM subjects never struggle to find work after their studies are over. This, simply put, is bullshit. In fact, I’d argue that my major had absolutely nothing to do with the issues I faced post-graduation.

Here are the plus sides to my studies and my post-undergraduate career: I enjoyed my studies, for the most part; I have been working in fields at least tangentially related to my major for most of my working life; and any problems I have had when searching for work weren’t necessarily due to the lack of related jobs. Rather, the situation, as always, is a bit more complicated than that.

Right about now I should express regret, bemoan “Oh, if only I had known XYZ.” Been there, done that. Such lamentations have been expressed online and off to exhaustion. Really, it’s cruel to scold our past selves for our ignorance or naivete, and frankly, it’s a waste of energy. While there may be something to be learned from my story, this is also not an advice column. Individual responsibility is given far too much weight in American society.

The reality is, back then, what else could I have done?

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

I. Before

“Could” is useless without context, without considering the person I was. What did I like? Reading, writing, and learning. What could I study? Writing and literature, what else? Where did I want to go? Away from home. These didn’t really translate into either saving money or going into a “job-ready” major.

That last point was really the most important. I always knew, without ever really knowing why, that I needed to get away from home. I couldn’t continue living with my parents and siblings, even though I spent much of my time at home. It would have been cheaper, surely, to continue living there and attend community college for free, but I never even considered it. I had to leave. Because even though I spent a lot of time at home, most of the time I wasn’t really there. Not mentally.

When I was home and not doing homework or taking care of basic needs, I was reading, drawing, watching movies or TV, playing video games, or writing. All of these activities involve media, an immersion into another world that can feel as real and tangible as the actual world. I escaped into fantasies, some of which resembled the real world, and some of which didn’t. My brother and sister also escaped, but physically, staying at friends’ houses for days at a time throughout their teenage years. Something toxic festered inside the house in which we grew up, one that did not involve alcohol (in fact, our house lacked it), strict religious rules, or overt abuse.

I was never entirely open when speaking with my mom. Topics of sex and crushes were beyond embarrassing. I avoided my dad when he was in a bad mood and could hardly work up the courage to ask him for anything. A noxious blend of anger and anxiety permeated the house, cramped as it was, and being one of two girls I was never really granted a proper amount of space. Just as black mold can induce delirium, the negative emotional energy must have infected all of us.

None of this felt apparent until years later. Adolescence is not a time for intense introspection. Or at least, not the healthy or meaningful variety.

Staying at home wasn’t an option, then. My world needed to expand beyond its current borders and I chose the frontier of Boston: a place I had been before, but a city of reasonable size, unlike the leviathan of Manhattan. I also chose it in part thanks to the encouragement of my aunt, who had gone to Boston University for her master’s degree and had been based in New England ever since.

Could I have stayed home, as things were? Maybe. If I had had therapy as a teenager? Probably. But it didn’t seem to have occurred to anyone that it would be useful to me, least of all myself. I was doing just fine in school – quite well, in fact, an all-A student – so what could possibly have been the problem? But just because you’re doing well in school doesn’t mean you’re doing well.

I was choosing a university in the 2006-2007 school year, a vastly different time than a mere year later. The prevailing gospel with regards to further education had not yet changed. My parents preached this gospel: study whatever you like, follow your dreams. They had even indulged my desire to publish a book, the first long-form story I had written. It was just simply published with a local printer, but that for the moment satisfied.

I came from a working-class family disguised as a middle-class one. My dad owned his own business while my mom took on low-level admin work. Despite the hostile home environment, my parents ensured that we wanted for nothing. We got almost everything we asked for Christmas, including a few expensive video game consoles, and the fridge was always full of food – sometimes too full, as some produce and leftovers would often get thrown away. But, during my college years, it became apparent that they didn’t have as much money as it seemed, and they certainly didn’t spend it wisely. College? What did they know about college? They knew it was good.

I don’t want to lay the entirety of the debt blame at the feet of my parents, who took out the student loans in their and my name, but they didn’t know student loans. My mom never even finished college, as much as she had wanted to, because her parents didn’t support her goals, neither financially nor emotionally. Perhaps a lot of parents of my mom’s age and class had also grown up with more restricted parenting, having been denied similar opportunities, and they didn’t see why they should deny them to their own children. Not when there were ways of affording college.

I started out wanting to study a mixture of writing and art; in the end I settled on just writing, due to my school of choice. While the gospel morphed to job readiness a few years later, I would have always chosen to continue on to college: I liked school. I was addicted to reading. I wanted to learn everything there was to know.

I didn’t think about employability. I wanted to create stories and share them with the world. I had a vague idea of what it meant to be a writer, of the steps necessary to get to publication. In the back of my 17-year-old mind I probably figured that I would do that – but I had no plan of action at all. Perhaps I hoped that the new environment would allow my hopes to naturally manifest, and at last, I would be seen and known.

So as I entered the summer after high school graduation, I had high hopes looking to the future. But hope without a plan is bound to disappoint.