The Unbearable Lightness of Student Loans

Times are hard. That’s a “der-hay” statement, I know. But, times have always been hard. There have always been wars and revolutions, recessions and depressions, embargoes and protest, and so on and so forth. Don’t believe me? I refer you to Billy Joel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g). What seems different to me about the current “times are hard” period is the incredible amount of whining we’re hearing about it, especially about student loan debt. I read article after article that explains in livid detail how today’s college graduates can’t get their lives started because of how much student loan debt they’re carrying. They come out of school, so the argument goes, with $25,000 to $55,000 in student loans, and because of this crushing debt load, they can’t buy houses or cars, can’t get married and have children, can’t achieve the American dream at all. The jobs they do get won’t pay the rent and groceries and their loan payments, so they have to move back in with mom and dad and dream about the day when they can finally have a real life. And as I read these accounts, the thought that runs through my puzzled brain is, “What a bunch of pathetic, whiny losers!” Harsh, I know, but hear me out.

Student Loans have Always been a Reality

Just as times have always been hard (see above), students have always (i.e. for all of my adult life) had to get student loans. Unless you were smart enough or talented enough to win a full-ride scholarship, or unless you were lucky enough to have a rich mommy and daddy who paid your way, you borrowed money to go to college. And when you finally launched out of those ivory towers with your coveted sheepskin clutched firmly to your breast, you were handed the bill. You went to the dance, now it was time to pay the piper. Case in point, yours truly.  I graduated with a BA in Classical Studies, an MA in English, and a $100,000 bill for services rendered. Oh, SNAP! It seemed so easy when I was filling out those forms and getting those nice big checks at the beginning of each semester. Tuition, books, living expenses for myself and my wife and my kids – oh, yes, whiny young things, I went through college with a whole family in tow. Now I was expected to hand over a whopping $900 every month for the next 20 years. I needed a job.

But finding a job in Idaho in 1996 was no mean feat. I was an adjunct instructor for a while, but that didn’t last. With no other prospects in sight, I took a job in a “bull labor” factory, where I learned what it means to eat your bread by the sweat of your brow. With no heat in the winter, no AC in the summer, no labor saving devices, I cursed every day that I had to go there and grunt my way through 8 hours of back-breaking work. When I started that job, I was a wad of cookie dough; a year later, I was carved out of wood. Then I moved from Idaho to Pennsylvania (there was a woman involved – don’t ask), where I took a job painting houses. After a couple of years of that – still cursing my fate – I transitioned into a finish carpenter with the help of a friend. Finally, in 2001, I landed a job as a technical writer with Bell + Howell in Chicago. I had first worked as a tech writer while a grad student in college, so I had some experience already, which got me in the door. This new job didn’t pay that great at first – about the same as I made trimming houses – but it was a job that used my heretofore wasted education. I lived in a cheap apartment, I drove an old car, I rarely ever went out, and I worked … hard, sometimes 12 hours a day. Also got a gig teaching at the local community college part time.

That was fifteen years ago. Since then, I’ve changed jobs four times, usually moving up in salary as I moved up in experience. I’ve owned three houses. They weren’t half-million-dollar mansions in gated communities – quite the opposite, actually. My first house was a crumbling bungalow that I picked up for a song and completely rebuilt into a pretty little show house. I sold it at the height of the recession – when everyone was losing their shirts – and managed to break even. Made a tidy profit on my second home. Expect to on the current domicile too. And I’ve owned number of cars since I landed that first gig, all of which are way better than the old GMC Astro van that I moved to Chicago with, the one that parts fell off of as I drove down the road. I’m at the top of my field now, making a nice salary, and living a comfortable life. I’m not rolling in dough, but I can afford to pay all of the bills, give money to my favorite charity, and still have cash left over at the end of the month for fun things like going out to dinner and a movie, or going on vacation, or buying my wife a present. And those pesky student loans? Well, I’m still paying on those. I got hardship forbearances for a few years, which added a lot of interest to the debt, then I got an income contingent repayment plan that keys my payments to a percentage of my taxable income. I’ll be paying for another fifteen years, but I can afford to do it now.

The point of all of this is to say that I started my life with a lot more student loan debt than most people do, and so did a lot of my friends, like Carlton who worked his way up to Vice Provost at USD, or Barb and JC who write novels while teaching college. We all had debt. We all had difficulty finding the perfect jobs and paying the bills in the beginning. Some still have trouble. But whenever I start to think I haven’t got all that I want, I remember that bull labor factory I slaved away in for a year, and I count myself blessed and content myself with what I’ve got. And maybe that’s the problem with a lot of young folks today – maybe they just expect too much too soon.

In tandem with all of those articles about how crippling student loan debt is keeping college grads from starting their lives, I'm seeing lots of articles on the “Culture of Entitlement.” According to Vocabulary.com, “if someone has a sense of entitlement, he believes he deserves certain privileges, and he’s arrogant about it. The term ‘culture of entitlement’ suggests that many people now have highly unreasonable expectations about what they are entitled too.” Or, as another blogger puts it:

According to parents and authors of the book, The Entitlement Trap, Richard and Linda Eyre, entitlement refers to the growing trend in children {and adults} to think that they can have, should have, and deserve to have whatever they want, whatever their friends have – and that they should have it now and not have to earn it or give up anything for it. (http://www.mariannesunderland.com/2012/01/09/attitudes-of-entitlement-what-are-they-and-why-should-i-care/)

So the culture of entitlement is a mindset that says, “I deserve everything I want, or everything that everyone else has, and I want it right now.” Gone is the idea that I have the right to work for what I want; in its place is the attitude that I just have the right to have what I want.

So the recent college grad, finding him/herself saddled with a student loan payment decides that if he/she is unable to land a six-figure-income job with a corner office, then he/she will definitely not take a low-paying, entry-level job, because – hey! – they have a college degree and they deserve something better. And instead of getting a cheap apartment and driving a beat-up car and living on beans and Ramen noodles, they move back in with mommy and daddy, because they deserve to live in a nice house, and to eat steak, and to watch a 54” flat screen, and drive a fancy car, and so on and so forth. And they cannot possibly get married, because you have to have a $50K wedding with a two-week honeymoon in Barbados, and how can you do that when you earn – if you work at all – minimum wage? And let’s not even talk about kids, cuz those little blighters are expensive, and if you have to spend all of your money on them, you won’t have any left over for the latest I-thingy or game console, and you can kiss good bye going to the bar every night.

Now do I think that everyone under the age of 30 thinks this way? Not a bit, cuz that would be stereotyping, which is something that only old folks do, right? Parents are also to blame. If you raise your kids to think that they deserve everything they want, then they will want everything they think they deserve. And if you do not make your kids go out and start their lives, they never will. I know several people my age who have thirty-something kids living at home. Why? Cuz they let them. And let's face it, the path of least resistance is easy to follow. The best thing my folks ever did for me was to kick me out of the house. Was it hard? You bet it was. Was I scared? You bet I was. But it was one of those sink or swim moments in life. I chose to learn how to swim.

So, if you are one of those college grads who feel that you can’t start your life because you have too much student loan debt, I have some words of advice. Get over it. You aren’t entitled to anything but an opportunity, and that you have in bucket-loads. You live in the most prosperous nation on earth, a nation that millions of people still risk everything they have to get to every year, a nation where you can still start with nothing and – with hard work – make something out of yourself. But you have to be willing to work, and you have to be willing to postpone you desires. So lose the notion that you deserve anything. You’re not special. You don’t deserve to have what it took your parents thirty years to obtain without putting in thirty years of hard work and sacrifice to get it. There are jobs out there if you are willing to lower your standards and work. So go get a job – any job – cuz one thing recruiters say over and over is that it’s easier to get hired if you are already working. Then work like your life depends on it, cuz it really does. And if you do that, then in twenty or thirty years, you’ll have made a life for yourself.

And if you find any of this offensive, then I can only imagine that you aren’t comfortable when the truth hits too close to home.