Help This Young Man....

[JayB]

Preserve his dignity!! He has a history degree! Ergo he shouldn't have to submit to the constraints like....working in an office...that lesser beings like accountants and engineers submit to if he wants to make enough money to live independently and pay back his loans!

 

"Student debt limits who we become

 

Ken Ilgunas, who lives in Niagara Falls, fears college is becoming unaffordable for most Americans.

 

 

I am 24, live with my parents, can’t find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high. I think of myself as ambitious, independent and hardworking. Now I’m dependent, unemployed and sleeping under the same Super Mario ceiling fan that I did when I was 7.

 

How did this happen? I did what every upstanding citizen is supposed to do. I went to college. I took out loans so I could enroll at Alfred University, a pricey private school. The next year, I transferred to the more finance-friendly University at Buffalo, where I could commute from home and push carts part-time at Home Depot.

 

I related my forthcoming debt to puberty or a midlife crisis — each an unavoidable nuisance; tickets required upon admission to the next stage of adulthood. But as interest rates climbed and the cost of tuition, books and daily living mounted to galactic proportions,

 

I realized this was more than some paltry inconvenience.

 

Upon graduating, I was helplessly launched headfirst into the “real world,” equipped with a degree in history and $32,000 in student loans. Before ricocheting back home, I would learn two important lessons: 1) There are no well-paying — let alone paying — jobs for history majors. 2) The real world is really tough.

 

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I had no intention of living in a society that was as unfair as this one. To seek a haven devoid of the ruthless 9-to-5 ebb and flow of contemporary America, I moved to Alaska.

 

As a liberal arts major, I dreamed of making a profound difference in people’s lives. Instead, for a year, I lived in Coldfoot, a town north of the Arctic Circle that resembles a Soviet Gulag camp. My job as a tour guide for visitors temporarily alleviated my money woes because it provided room and board, but when the season ended and I moved back home, I was again confronted with the grim realities of debt.

 

Desperate, I browsed through insurance and bank job descriptions. I had hit an all-time low. Could I surrender my soul for health coverage and a steady income? Could I sacrifice my ideals by falling into line?

 

Suddenly, living at home didn’t seem nearly as degrading as selling out. But sadly, other graduates don’t have any choice but to work for temp agencies and retail stores to eke by.

 

That’s the tragedy of student debt: it doesn’t just limit what we do, but who we become. Forget volunteering. Forget traveling. Forget trying to improve your country, or yourself. You’ve got bills to pay, young man.

 

Unfortunately, the recent passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act doesn’t portend that times are a-changin’. The act reduces interest rates on Stafford Loans and increases Pell Grant awards. Whoopty-do.

 

There’s no question that this is a step forward. But we’re still talking pennies and nickels when we need to completely revolutionize the government’s role in financing post-secondary education.

 

College is a wonderful experience and something every young citizen should pursue. But without help, a college education is becoming an unaffordable rite of passage and a privilege of the affluent.

 

My loan payments can’t wait much longer, and soon I must leave home to find work that doesn’t compromise my integrity. Although I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I had declared as an accounting major and got a cushy job punching numbers somewhere, I’ll take my history major, my debt and my mom’s cooking any day of the week. "

[Crillz]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cj001f]

Yeah he should have gone to vocational school, err gotten a "real" degree. God knows we need more dullards in the world.

[chucK]

Jeez that kid sounds like a profoundly naive, narcissistic kid who is obsessed with his own righteousness. I'd say he has a future in Alaska but I guess that didn't work out for him.

 

Maybe he shoulda just got his parents to pay for his college.

[foraker]

I'll help him: Here's my patented #9 Boot to the Ass.

[hefeweizen]

What a f-ing whiner! Take some responsibilty for yourself kid! Maybe you should've done just a little bit of math before deciding on your degree vs. loan amount decision. My parents laughed me out of the room when I wanted to go to University of Colorado, know where I ended up? Central Oregon Community College. 2 years of meeting great people, climbing at Smith, and getting all the bullsh*t out of the way (pre-req's) before plunking down real debt for student loans.

 

Anyway, hindsight 20-20 etc, now he can look into his options as far as what kind of employment he is willing to accept that wont compromise his precious integrity.

 

BTW: student debt doesn't limit what you become, you do.

[olyclimber]

My advice would be this: go back to school.

[lizard_brain]

Where's the love?

[ClimbingPanther]

porter's got a monopoly on it

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

one more member of the culture of entitlement

 

 

[hefeweizen]

I am 24, live with my parents, can’t find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high. I think of myself as ambitious, independent and hardworking.

 

Yeah, I think of myself as master of the universe, irrestible to the opposite sex, and brilliant beyond comprehension. However that doesn't seem to count much to the outside world.

[lizard_brain]

I am 24, live with my parents, can’t find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high. I think of myself as ambitious, independent and hardworking.

 

I'm middle-aged, my parents are dead, I'm a born slacker, my debts are minimal. I think of myself as opportunistic, self-centered, and I love this life.

 

P.S. Wealthy single women with terminal illnesses seeking stable relationships are welcome to PM me.

[JayB]

Jeez that kid sounds like a profoundly naive, narcissistic kid who is obsessed with his own righteousness. I'd say he has a future in Alaska but I guess that didn't work out for him.

 

Maybe he shoulda just got his parents to pay for his college.

 

 

It doesn't actually sound like his debts are the key limitation. If he had said, "I found a job that neither involves working in an office, nor that I consider beneath my dignity - but unfortunately it doesn't pay enough for me to live independently *and* pay off my student loans," then perhaps the loans would be the key variable.

 

Seems to me like he's having a tough time grappling with the cosmic injustice inherent in the fact that he didn't have a dream job waiting for him upon graduation, rather than his student loan debt. Unfortunately for him, paying for food, clothing, shelter, insurance, etc often compel lesser beings to make concessions and compromises, and exemption from student loan debt wouldn't diminish the probability that he'd have to contend with any of these realities after graduating.

[underworld]

this guy must never of heard of people before him that got liberal arts degrees...

 

how does the saying go? those that don't know history are bound to repeat it... or something like that.

 

ironical..

Edited October 26, 2007 by underworld

[JayB]

Yeah he should have gone to vocational school, err gotten a "real" degree. God knows we need more dullards in the world.

 

Getting an education and preparing for a career are only mutually exclusive goals for some.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Yeah he should have gone to vocational school, err gotten a "real" degree. God knows we need more dullards in the world.

 

Getting an education and preparing for a career are only mutually exclusive goals for some.

 

looks like his "education" has prepared him ... for nothing worth paying for.

[Dechristo]

dude needs to get his hands dirty to clean his mind.

[JayB]

Communications majors always struck me as the folks who were taking their education seriously, and seizing every opportunity to challenge themselves and develop all of the capacities that a college education was intended to foster.

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Communications majors always struck me as the folks who were taking their education seriously, and seizing every opportunity to challenge themselves and develop all of the capacities that a college education was intended to foster.

 

 

Communications, Sociology, and English are the trifecta of slackers - a refuge for failed pre-med, engineering, and hard-science majors.

[JayB]

C'mom, they're busy educating themselves while the folks you are talking about are wasting all of their time studying.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

C'mom, they're busy educating themselves while the folks you are talking about are wasting all of their time studying.

 

yeah, they are training their minds to be 'critical thinkers'.

[chucK]

this guy must never of heard of people before him that got liberal arts degrees...

 

how does the saying go? those that don't know history are bound to repeat it... or something like that.

 

ironical..

 

 

nice catch!

 

The irony is so perfect it makes me wonder if this "letter" is in fact a troll (better check snopes.com)

[G-spotter]

At least he can write.

[Dechristo]

two wrongs do not make a write

[lizard_brain]

Write on.