Thread by @learnteachwin

Since some of y'all want to be disingenuous about the costs of college, I will just mention that even with a full tuition scholarship for undergrad as well as having tuition covered in my MA and PhD, I still ended up with student loan debt.

How?

Well...

First of all, tuition isn't the only thing you have to pay when you go to college. You have to pay fees. You also have to pay room & board (if you live on campus) or rent + groceries + other bills (if you live off campus).

Unless you stay home with your family, but y'all get mad at us for that too.

So.

When I started undergrad, my mom paid the room & board for like the first semester. But it was too much.

(In 2005, it was too much. I can only imagine what it looks like now)

So I took out loans. And that's how I paid all of my non-tuition costs while I was in undergrad.

What's that you say?

Get a job?

Fun fact: I worked part time jobs almost the entire time I was in undergrad.

Why not a full time job? Cuz I was a full time student. I thought y'all wanted me to concentrate on...nevermind...

Go to a cheaper school?

I went to a state school. In my home state. In the midwest.

Probably not getting much cheaper, champ.

Ok, so it took me 5 years to finish. My scholarship didn't cover that last year's tuition.

Haha! You should have finished sooner!

Perhaps. But it is extremely typical to take more than four years to finish.

Plus, I also studied abroad, which if I'm not mistaken, is another thing y'all encourage 🤔. It's great, but that money has to come from somewhere too. Shout out to those student loans.

Ok, so I finish undergrad with a good chunk of loan debt, but it doesn't seem insurmountable.

Yet.

Then I go out into the "real world" and work for two years. But I don't get a job in my field that first year because folks have done terribad things to the education system. I do get a job teaching middle school that second year though.

So I do make some payments on those loans, but not a lot. I don't if y'all have looked at what middle school teachers get paid recently, but uh, it's

Now I'm HUGE NERD, so I go back to school.

As one does.

And I start slow with just an MA program.

Tuition is covered. Huzzah!

I teach 2 classes a semester. Hey, I was just coming off teaching 75 middle schoolers a day. 50 college freshman, 3x is comparatively light work.

*3x a week

But the jig, so to speak, is that the stipend is low.

Less than 10k a year low.

So how do we pay the bills again? Ah yes, loans.

And this is where things really get derailed for me loan-wise. My student loan debt basically doubles here.

Hey, I'm still a HUGE NERD, so yeah, let's do this PhD thing.

Ok, so major life change: I get married.

This is an unexpected bill hack.

I do my PhD program full time while he works full time, and yeah, things get rough in the summer, but it's much more manageable.

Most importantly, I don't do anymore loans.

But here's the thing, I'm not paying on the loans I already have while I'm doing this program. They're deferred because I'm in school. But they still accrue interest.

Pay on the interest, you say?

With what? Monopoly money?

See I get a stipend in my PhD too, which is considerably more than the stipend from my MA.

(ironically, for teaching fewer classes)

But nobody tells you upfront how expensive adulting is. Especially cars. GOOD LORD CARS WHY.

Oh I shouldn't have a car?

Didn't I tell you I live in the midwest?

Ok, so here we are.

I'm graduating in about 2 weeks. I haven't taken out any student loans since 2014, but it's looming like a guillotine.

Oh btw, my husband has student loan debt too.

I do not come from wealth. I don't even come from "savings."

But I love learning. I don't regret any of my degrees. I wholeheartedly believe my career choice is the correct one for me. I'm not afraid to work to support myself and/or my education.

I've worked in some capacity for the last 11 years. Sometimes more than one job at a time in addition to school.

It just wasn't enough.

For the people who need it the most, it's never enough. And the scholarships and grants out there right now don't eradicate that reality.

One of my extra jobs that I have right now (that I love!) is mentoring local Latinx high school kids, primarily geared toward (though not exclusively focused on) college ambitions.

And probably the only thing that vexxes them more than all of the standardized (which is a soapbox for another day) is figuring out how on earth they're gonna pay for this education that pretty much every career they could want demands they have.

We go through all of the possibilities. We help them apply for scholarships (do y'all know what some of those apps require???). We talk about the risks of loans. We look into starting at the community college in town before transferring elsewhere.

We're looking for every possible way in which they can get that education without crushing debt.

And do you know what?

It's still not enough.

So if Elizabeth Warren (or whoever) wants to come through and make this better, I'm all for it.

I don't care what you've already paid. I don't care what I'll have already paid.

What I do care about is making a future in which future generations don't have to pay.

I don't know what kind of selfish you have to be to want other people to suffer because you suffered, but that's not my ministry.

And if you're one of those folks saying they can do it without debt because you Cirque du Soleil'd your way into doing without debt, congratulations. You want a cookie or do you want to actually help people?

I'm in the business of helping people.

People.

Broadly construed.

Not just myself or my family or my friends or my neighbors.

People.

Dassit.

While y'all are here, how about donating to this excellent cause? You'd be helping to offset costs of our equally problematic healthcare system if you do 😊

give.transplants.org/site/TR/NFTPat…

(I do have a Soundcloud, but unless you really want to hear me and my friends wax poetic about Degrassi, you probably don't need it in your life 😂)