Posted on 10/26/2007 6:49:11 PM PDT by VA Voter
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.
Ken Ilgunas, who lives in Niagara Falls, fears college is becoming unaffordable for most Americans.
And he’s obviously never heard of the museum industry. I’d guess they’d take a history major or two.
Shouldn’t his history ciricculum have taught him that there are no jobs for history majors?
I went to the Buffalo paper where the story originated and wanted to tell the kid that (as the rest of us have pointed out). Too bad; they don’t allow comments over there.
Haliburton is looking for truck drivers to drive fuel tank trucks in Iraq for $ 90,000 a year. Get to strap on a pistol and carry a carbine on the job.
Different title and source, but we've already had a lot of fun beating on this pinata.
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Oh, yeah. I wanna hire him.
If he wanted a degree in history, he could have obtained his teaching certificate to go with it. Instant job.
Or better yet, get the history degree within an ROTC program. Instant job.
Or spend the $32,000 learning a trade and opening a business.
He is as dumb as I was when I left college with a degree in English. It didn’t take me long to go to nursing school to get a marketable skill.
That should be “curriculum”. Sorry.
History is a hobby. Get a degree that prepares you for a job. Stop whining. You are not the first graduate to have trouble finding a job. Nor are you the first person to be in debt. Just face it. You made some bad decisions. Now, get your act together and make something of yourself so we don’t have to pay any more of your bills.
Want to borrow a kid? If he screws up his education, I will rent him out. LOL.
In Europe, for hundreds of years, one's education included becoming a master in some trade, be it masonry, arts, goldsmith, = as a fall-back in times when the 'real' jobs were scarce. It was a good backup plan.
I think high schoolers and college kis alike should be required to take a 2 year course in some trade at a voc school. There would far less unemployment
Waaaah! Maybe if you had a few econ classes you would have learned about the distorting effects government subsidies have on markets. To summarize, Uncle Sucker subsidizing so much of college education allows the price on it for everyone to rise.
Mom and Dad need to send JR. packing.
Sure, but he would have to compromise his integrity by wearing a clean shirt showing up on time, and filling out reports.
Dude, get a grip. Look, your major is useless in this techno-specialist world. Next trick, go back to school for computors, or even better, join the Army and become a Master of the Bayonet. When you get out you’ll still be able to work on PCs, and kick crap out of anyone dissin’ Rangers. You’ll hate liberals and have lovely flashbacks of combat, like mine, to remind you of the good old days. Don’t be such a whiner!
Got anything teaching history for, say, 40.00 per hour? These Alaksa trips ain't cheap.
So how does “work” compromise your integrity?
Only place that pays for a history degree is the military and they have help pay your college loans.
What did he expect to make with a history degree?
>> I am 24, live with my parents, can’t find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high.
Ken, glad to see you made it through Complaining 101, 201, and 301. You’re very good at it. Get a job in a journalism.
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