Student Loan Justice

I knew what I was doing when I signed that promissory note for my student loan. I am not avoiding nor disavowing any responsibility for that action.

Sure, when you are 19 years old debt doesn’t seem so important. Especially if you can avoid working at the lumber mill, the single employer of your small mountain town. Sure, in the pre-collapse economy a little debt hardly casts a shadow on the blue skies and sunshine future everyone has told you about. You also understand that coming from a family that couldn’t afford tuition, well, it meant funding it on your own. And, sure, for an associate transfer degree it'll only put you in the hole ~$4k. All things considered, not too bad for a 22 year old accepted into an overseas TEFL Chinese exchange program and also accepted to attend, upon return, a top-rated international business bachelor program.

Teaching English in China was an amazing 6 months of my life. The only major issue was that my father got himself into a horrific car accident a month into the trip. I immediately called him at the hospital, and the first thing he said was, “Stay in China, don’t return… I am fine, just stay in China and don’t worry.” I was conflicted on what I should do but decided if he wasn’t going to die than I should follow his wishes. For the rest of my trip I continued to stay in touch with him but didn’t really find out how bad he was until I returned to Seattle. Finding him financially bankrupt and in terrible health. So, I help pack his stuff and we drive to San Diego, moved into an apartment and I begin attending school while he recovered.

We don’t mean for life to put us in a corner. We don’t want to go into debt for an education. We don’t want to work a menial job as our costly degree depreciates its’ useful value until all we have is a ~$40k framed piece of paper. But we do what we have to do.

While waiting to become a resident Californian (because loan or no loan I couldn’t afford out-of-state tuition) I convince my brother to move into the apartment with father and I… and it is one big happy family, or as happy as family can be living in an apartment. My fathers’ health improves and he moves back to Seattle. I continue my studies at SDSU, and my brother begins attending a community college… and, fast-forwarding a few years, I am only in debt an additional ~$15k. So, at the beginning of 2008, with only three semesters left until graduation I am approximately $19k in debt.

You have hopes and dreams, and you have an idea about what your life will be like after a proper education. You are told that the opportunities your parents didn’t have would magically be available to you with a diploma. You don’t kid yourself, you hear a sales pitch and know fairy tales are for children, but you also reason that doors will open a little easier for you with a diploma, and if you have the tenacity, the intelligence, and some luck… well, blue skies and sunshine really is the limit.

Except, I have forgotten to mention my fathers free-and-clear house gifted to me many years ago as my inheritance, and more to the point, I have forgotten to mention the loans taken out against it. The first loan was just after he rolled his truck and it became imperative to cover his bills until he recovered. As his condition improved my father moved out of the California apartment and back into the Seattle house, but it was obvious that in his condition of disability and unemployment we would need to sell the house... and in that golden age of property values we should be able to profit enough to stay afloat until things straightened out for him financially… or until I graduated and became the patriarch.

Now, to the crux of the story. In April 2008 I followed in my fathers’ footsteps (or tire-marks) and crash a motorcycle in a severe way. I am responsible enough to have health insurance, but my plan limit was $50k. I hadn’t counted on needing more than that. Unfortunately, the hospital bill left me in debt well over $100k after the insurance covered it's portion. Not to be deterred I recovered the use of my legs, continued my education, and had the hospital waive most of the remaining balance owed. My luck was still holding out. Or so it seemed. My fathers house still needed to be sold but it had fallen into disrepair. I refinance for home improvements to get a premium price… but what happens in early 2008, other than my near-death motorcycle crash? That’s right, turns out the entire worldwide financial market is being less honest than a two-dollar inner-city card-hustler… a severe housing crash. My house becomes nearly worthless at the same time I am learning how to walk again, and my student loans mostly go toward continuing the house payment for the last few uni semesters, with my father covering what he could as his 'rental cost'. 

[To my fathers credit he re-payed every dollar loaned from my money. I was frivolous with the money though, as young dumb men often are, and it was made even easier as the reimbursements came in convenient weekend party sized allotments or medium sized world wide travel fund allotments.] 

I graduate with a doubled student loan debt because I had taken out the maximum amount for the final year to cover… well, to cover the lemons of life. So; ~$4k owed to Great Lakes for my associates degree, ~$35k owed to Direct Loans for my bachelors degree, and ~$70k owed to the now defunct WaMu for crashing the housing market before I could sell my property.

Your hopes and dreams come just within reach when you graduate; plans form, connections are forged, time and money invested, and you nearly make it. You can almost taste your nirvana future. Unfortunately for you, the housing hoops needing jumped through require a primary residency if you are to get a mortgage modification. Also, you fall in love visiting back home and fall back out again just as quickly as you get moved. You also, quite stupidly in hindsight, consolidate your loans from the lower interest Great Lakes account to Direct Loans, whom ironically, sells your note back to Great Lakes at the higher interest rate. You do what is needed, believing you are just putting dreams on hold as you move temporarily back into your family's home, get hired on working as the abject technician, and begin a menial cyclical life of work, bills, weekend escape at a bar/show/movie, work, bills, weekend escape, etc. After a couple years you begin to realize that your dreams aren’t on hold, your house will go into foreclosure eventually, and you will be a technician for the rest of your life. What do you do? What can you do?

For better or worse I decided to quit my job, move back to San Diego and finish following my dreams. The mortgage mediation was a failure due to their failure to act in good faith towards a modification that left foreclosure as my only option (They were unable to offer payments that are close to reasonable). And, since my student loans are shackled to me for life, I request Great Lakes to grant forbearance on my student loan until I will be able to free myself from that aggregate debt-slavery.

Being a business major I know that it is a cut-throat world, you get no breaks for good intentions, no leniency for excuses, and no pity for unfortunate circumstances. I know that having stayed current on payments (albeit with forbearance and deferments) is no reason for debts to be decreased or interest to be lowered. I also know that working hard isn’t a choice, it is necessity, regardless of circumstance. That dreams and hopes die even harder than all the work I will ever put toward them, even until I myself die. I know that we all want to make the world a more beautiful place, for ourselves and for our future selves. That I want a place where there is more joy, less pain, maybe not less struggle but at least more fairness, and that these are things I can create… if it weren’t for the horrid times, the depressions, the feeling that all beauty is mocking me, mocking us. The bank will took my house, I have no other way to see it. I will owe my student debt for the rest of my life. I am imprisoned by these hard realities, and also by my dreams. Those dreams that are just simple questions… Why can’t we advance humanity forward and create a past to be proud of? I don’t want change for myself, I want change for the sake of change. The shameful thing about our education system, and our system in general, is that the cost to buy in outweighs the returns. We are a generation that saw the top of the pyramid making out good and didn’t realize we were getting in on the bottom floor of the worlds greatest Ponzi scheme. 

When I look around at all the other struggling people of this world I find solace in the knowledge that my life is quite easy. Perhaps this story sounds as if I am complaining, as if I am disappointed in my lack of advantages, lack of entitlement. That couldn't be further from the truth. I am quite advantaged, quite entitled. I am only disappointed in a lack of imaginative solutions to the problems we all face. And, in the end we only have one solution; we do what we have to do.