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An Average Student Debt Story

At 18 years old, I didn't want to go into student debt, because I was told I wouldn't pay it back. My parents insisted that I should go to a university because I have high potential and shouldn't waste it.

After school, it was the economic recession of 2009 and I got a job at a start up company, but lost it three months later when the company was bought out. It would be years until I worked at a tech company again, since I had little experience. Without many options left for my career, I went to graduate school. My staff were always much too busy to work with me but I managed to graduate. My quality of education was very low, without much support from my staff. But my tuition bill is very high.

I apply to tech companies and I live in the bay area but this doesn't make it much easier to find a job. I was laid off from my tech job in 2016, and I have only found contracts ever since. I don't pay high rent, and live outside of the city. But I never have enough money to make high payments on my debt, and I have no concept of making enough money to pay it off in the next 10 years, or even 20 years. My total debt is reaching 200,000 because of interest. It was 60,000 after my bachelors. It was too much money for a mediocre amount of mentorship and mid-level quality of curriculum. With interest and an unstable work record, I have not been able to make much a dent in my debt.

This was the most misleading path I could have taken and as a kid of age 18, I was treated as a disappointment by student peers and my parents when I was considering going to a community college to avoid being in student debt. There's not much of a path for young people other than an expensive college or the military. College does NOT prepare graduates for their career either. College was simply not beneficial enough to me in launching a career that is successful enough to pay off my loans. Each and every student in America who attends college would have to be veritably wealthy to afford what is considered a decent university education. Keeping us in debt for the rest of our lives will not solve our education problem in America.

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