Jill has a fantastic post up on some article that derides my generation for having the audacity to want higher education and opportunity. Although the author of said article covers some of the reasons that this generation of young people are deep in debt, she nevertheless labels us “Generation Me,” students and recent graduates who are such entitled twits that we can’t be bothered to pay attention to our finances what for the loans and credit cards.
Of course I read this bitterly. A few weeks back I posted a request for topics that I could possibly write on. La Lubu, whom I will kiss on the mouth should I ever meet her in person, asked why I hadn’t yet left Indiana, especially considering the brain-drain of college graduates that is so prevalent in our area of the country. This is why.
As I said in the comments at Feministe, my education didn’t cost nearly what it costs Jill — I went to a Big Ten land-grant university — but it cost me enough in loans that I struggle with pennies and nickels. What kills me about the article Jill successfully excoriates is that I spent my entire time in undergrad supporting Ethan and myself on the maximum loans and grants I could get, all the while knowing that if I could only get a degree I would be okay in the future (I regularly repeated this to myself when everything seemed beyond my control). To be written off as a thing of entitlement is infuriating.
I knew wrong. It was incredibly naive of me to think that a degree alone would be enough to guarantee any kind of employment. Yet the degree was my goal and I never doubted my ability to secure gainful employment after graduation. I chose to spend time with Ethan and concentrate on my studies instead of getting outside employment during college — which would have reduced my loan amounts — and I had to maintain my tunnel vision of family, home, and studies in order to keep going. At many points during the six years I was in college, full-time, I wanted to give up. I thought it would never end.
Then it did. I had my golden ticket. But during those six arduous years, the job market in my area of the country tanked. Not only had it tanked, but the area schools were forced to cut back. My potential job as a teacher was nixed if I wanted to remain near my parents and Ethan’s father. In any case, No Child Left Behind changed the schools as I was taught to know them, and my dedication to teaching waned as the weight of NCLB fell on the shoulders of the fellow English teachers that had graduated before me and had secured local teaching positions before the cutbacks. They hated their jobs. I looked anyway, but the only teaching position I could fill was a part-time job coaching test skills for kids who couldn’t pass the standardized exams. And you know how I love high-stakes standardized testing.
Area schools are still laying off teachers, and because I chose to be an English teacher instead of a Math or Science teacher, I am still officially fucked.
I was unemployed for months.
Flash forward and I’m working ridiculous hours in a service position, not even making double minimum wage, behind on bills, because the job market is still bad. I mean, bad. Sure, the job market is poor around the country, but you try living in an area with two primary industries and you don’t know jack about either of them — add that the area is flush with college graduates who know a hell of a lot more about those industries than you could ever hope to understand. You are not connected in any meaningful way to the people of power around you, whereas many of those fresh-faced college grads are, and they’re doing a-okay while you look on sideways wondering where the hell you went wrong.
My choices are few. Move away from my support system or live the best way I can here. Maybe grad school? Who the fuck knows? Linda Hirschman hasn’t written a book for failed women yet.
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote recently on this, and I sat on her post for weeks not knowing how to address it. The truth is that my lack of success, my disappointment with myself and my circumstances, has led me down a very difficult path, one of severe depression and yes, suicidal thoughts.
Shame hangs heavy over the economic landscape: the shame of the newly laid-off, the shame of the chronically poor. It’s easy enough for enlightened members of the comfortable classes to insist there’s no reason for shame: You didn’t bring the layoff down on yourself; you didn’t determine that the maximum wage in your line of work would be in the neighborhood of $8 an hour. Snap out of it, I want to say, blame the economy or its corporate chieftains. Just don’t blame yourself!
But shame is a verb as well as a noun. Almost nobody arrives at shame on their own; there are shamers and shamees. Hester Prynne didn’t pin that scarlet A on her own chest. In fact, it may be wiser to think of shame as a relationship rather than just a feeling: a relationship of domination in which the mocking judgments of the dominant are internalized by the dominated.
This is one abusive relationship from which I have yet to find a safe haven.
I still submit my resume to jobs that I know I could do, salaried positions that are nevertheless below my ability, but they’re salary and I’m anything if unchallenged at my current job. Many of my friends are in similar positions. Those that aren’t scored great internships in college because they knew somebody, and subsequently got great employment because they knew somebody. My peers that didn’t bother with college have been working since before they graduated from high school — and contrary to the American mythology about the need for education, seem to be doing better right now than most of us who bothered with college. Nevertheless, I keep learning and working, and trying to do the best I can at what I hope is eventually proven a pit stop. I love my co-workers, they seem to enjoy me, and I find odd satisfaction in a job that requires far less of me than what I am capable of.
Moral of the story: Lawyer Mikey of Jill’s post (whose hair is most ironical) has much better luck at finding gainful employment than I do, given his education and location, but a college degree, excellent grades and excellent references don’t guarantee a goddamned thing. The debt, on the other hand, is solid.
Why I haven’t left yet: I can’t afford to, I can’t afford not to. That my parents are my landlords is a good thing. That I can no longer afford to live in the house I love is heartbreaking. I haven’t sold Feministe to any pornographers yet, so there’s always a bright side.
Okay, listen up, Lauren. Your loans do not have to be in repayment, if you had largely federally-guaranteed loans like Direct Loans or Sallie Mae loans. They will let you go on forbearance for YEARS. I only hit the wall on my Sallie Mae forbearances this year, and I’ve been out of law school for 10 years. If you’re unemployed, I think you can get a deferment, which is different than a forbearance because with a forbearance, you don’t pay, but interest still accumulates. Deferments, like what you get when you’re in school full-time, freeze the interest.
Seriously. Look into this. You do not need to be burdened with debt when you’re struggling. They have all kinds of repayment options, because they don’t want people defaulting (and if you do, they’ll go after your tax refund, because, hey, they’re the government).
As for the shame thing, much of the advice to people who are in serious debt has to do with shame — don’t buy coffee in coffee shops, bring your lunch, etc. They even give this advice to students who have fixed loan amounts for living expenses, as if the cost of the occasional latte that comes out of a finite pool of loan money is going to be what you’re paying off in 20 years, rather than that 10% tuition hike last year, which caused you to have to borrow MORE money.
Also, I heard something on NPR that was amazing — they were doing a story on personal debt and credit-card balances, and they happened to ask people at the CIA while they were there to do a national-security-related story to discuss their personal finances for the other story.
And you know what? Not one of the people who would speak on the record about national security would divulge their personal credit information.
Oh my god. This makes me want to punch someone right in the head. Maybe myself.
You just can’t win for losing, can you?
It’s cost me $60,000 in student loans and credit card debt to get myself in a position to earn $38,000 a year, which is more than my dad made the whole time we were growing up. I tried to make good financial decisions, but to launch myself up a class, I had to pay for it.
I’m sorry. I feel like I’m being incoherent, but I’m just enraged. It’s like they just keep moving the bar. If you’re poor, it’s because you don’t work hard and take risks. If you work hard and take risks, then you’re an entitled brat who runs up debt because she thinks the world owes her something without her having to work at it. I suppose when I finally do get my debt paid off, should that ever happen, there will be some other patronizing jerks who will come along and let me know how and why I was wrong to do that, too.
Also, amen to everything you said about how important it is to know people in order to get jobs. That’s yet another thing someone neglected to tell me back when I was signing loan papers left and right–that all the education in the world wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t lucky, too.
God, Lauren, I totally understand the shame. I had my 10-year high school reunion last month, and I reeeaally did not want to go. I said it was because I didn’t want to see people, and already talked to anyone I wanted to talk to, and knowing this was small town Kansas, I didn’t wanna get in some shitty fight with a bunch of right-wing assholes. That was all true, but the biggest thing was that I would have to tell everyone that I have a crap customer service job that I’m going to lose in a month and a half (thank you Dept of Homeland Security!). Six years of liberal arts education, my head’s busting with ideology and theories, and I’ve got a job that anybody with a high school diploma and a wpm of 20 could have.
There’s no way that I could support myself if I had student loans, which, thank God, I don’t. Hell, I can barely do it now, and my parents are paying my health insurance.
I didn’t think the article was totally shitting on the 18-35 crowd (the only age range mentioned). The author does discuss systemic issues (such as decrease in aid while tuition increases) and societal issues (such as consumerism) and found examples of folks who have debt because they just couldn’t keep themselves away from the bars, coffee shops, and new car dealerships. Is one more to blame than the other?
If all of my debt was from mindless consumption instead of school tuition/fees, textbooks, and dental care, I would be infuriated, too. But I know my own situation and how I got into it. I’ve never looked to my liberal arts degree to be my golden ticket, maybe more like my silver ticket. (I hope) I won’t be flipping burgers come May 2007, but I know I also won’t be making $50K .
Besides, I thought we were Generation X or Q or something.
On a related note, I get the feeling I should expect my debt to only increase, as everybody expects graduate school to be next on my to-do list. The profs I’ve been talking with don’t even contemplate someone stopping at the bachelor level. A bachelor’s degree seems to be the new high school diploma.
Oh, Lauren! A failed woman? You are YOUNG. Young, young, young. You haven’t failed. Christ, you’ve hardly started. Just out of college, just finding your feet. We all went though what you’re going through in our 20s — when I was in my 20s it was the 1980s, and for all you may have heard about the Reagan-era coke party, it was actually a fucking depression for most of us. School loans sky-high, shitty job market. Jesus.
I’m not minimizing what you’re going through, because I know it’s a squeeze. Been there. I just want you to stop with this “I’m already a failure” business. I’m 20 years older than you, and I promise you: in due time you will be successful in your career, happily watching your wonderful son grow up, and chuckling at how when you were 20-something you thought you’d already failed.
Hang in there, my dear.
Preach it, sister.
That’s about all I can say on this subject, because if I start talking about it… Well, I’ve tried five times to even type the explanatory sentence and no go.
Holy, hell. If I could reach the hell through the computer and give you a job I would.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN POVERTY. There is NO shame in working service industry; even with a degree.
I am sorry, goddamned sorry, that you haven’t been hired for your intelligence and insight; I am sorry that there’s the stupid NCLB program; I am sorry it is so hard to have debt and a kid. My mom was in your shoes, and I know it’s hard. Please don’t be ashamed: my mom was the best thing in my life, and still is an example of making it when the cards are stacked against you. You have made choices that honour your son and yourself; that is nothing to be ashamed of.
You are not a failed woman.
There’s a great book called “Working Stiff’s Manifesto” (I think by Iain Levinson?) about one guy’s search for meaningful employment after getting a degree in English. It’s grim, but pretty freaking hilarious.
I think the first years out of college are the most difficult time in many people’s lives, for all kinds of reasons –and regardless of one’s generation. That dot-com boom of the 90s you may have heard of? Had exactly zero impact on a girl with a degree in the social sciences!
But Violet Socks has it right: you are YOUNG and you are just BEGINNING. Anyone who reads your blog knows how much good stuff you will bring to wherever you are, whatever job you happen to be doing.
What Violet said about being failed. I got out of Stanford in the 80s, in the middle of a Reagan recession, and with a UTI that didn’t get diagnosed properly and developed into a kidney infection. And I spent a year looking for work (with some part-time, very temporary jobs that didn’t pay much or lead anywhere), while sick and unable to afford doctors and, when I did get into a doctor, told it was in my head. I felt like a total depressed, suicidal failure at the time, and all the more of a failure because I’d gone to Stanford, darn it, and with that I ought to actually be able to be gainfully employed. After I did get a job, and get well, there was still a period where I was ashamed of the level of job I’d gotten. And I remember the guy who graduated a couple of years after me, who through some connection or other got a computer programming job when he knew less about computer programming than I did, and I hadn’t managed to make any connection work.
This isn’t failure; it’s what starting out in life after college is like, for a lot of us, even those of us who eventually wind up doing just fine.
I have a similar story as well. I graduated from Northwestern with a degree in math in 1990, which was a horrible year to find a job. 1991 was no better. Now I had a bit of chip on my shoulder that I wouldn’t work for certain industries, so I did limit my choices somewhat. I ended up working for a non-profit for 13K a year. I got into more debt. After a couple years at the non-profit, I was tired of eating lentils ever day with occassional splurges on $0.69 taco bell burritos or $2 lattes. However, now my math degree from Northwestern didn’t mean squat. I started a business and 18 months later that failed. I worked as a waiter for the next few years. I made decent money. Still, I was stagnating and didn’t see myself having a career in the restaurant business. I started temping to get some office skills. Eventually I landed a job in customer service at a company I liked. I was 29 years old at this time and struggling to even pay the interest on my debt. After 10 years, I’ve done well enough here. I don’t make a great salary, but it is adequate. I have a secure position and the respect of my peers. I’ve finally paid off my student loan debt.
Now I can think about going to graduate school. I wasn’t going to gamble by going into more debt for grad school. I’ve become very averse to it. To the poster up thread who is contemplating more debt for grad school; if it is not an MBA, law or medical school, that graduate degree probably does not make economic sense right now. Even if you intend to be an academic, why not get a job and try to pay down the debt a bit?
I understand that feeling of shame. When I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I became more aware of just how much the stress of daily living while poor was affecting me.
I can’t imagine the responsibility of caring for Ethan, but I can relate the feelings of failure as a college grad with no dream job. I graduated in the rust belt of buffalo with a much less marketable degree (media studies. even I hardly know what that means). I thought some nonprofit would welcome me with open arms and pay me the $10 an hour I knew would feel like making it. Instead I found myself working as a secretary – which, as a gay dude, was ironic in a bad way. It took me years of saving to move to NYC, where even with jobs aplenty it took 18 months to get a job I like, but I landed far, far away from the nonprofit world my college values demanded.
I echo everyone’s comments about being too soon to call yourself a failure, but I know that’s a hard thing to convince yourself to feel. School is such an ego build-up that you really do expect the world to roll over and give you everything you want when you graduate. It took me 7 years to get to a place I’m satisfyed with – and even then I had to adjust some of my expectations (the man has plenty of money to pay you if you work for a giant corporation). You’ll make it. Too smart not to.
I always thought my degree would be my golden ticket too. I worked full time as a secretary and finished my degree in the evenings. This was before I had kids. I was lucky that my then employer paid about 25-75% of my tuition (dependent on grades) and the rest I was able to pay as I went. So I am lucky in that I don’t have education loan balances (but I still have lots of good ol’ fashioned debt, ha ha). Still, it seems I’m most employable in the same field I was in before I got my degree (although now instead of a secretary I can be an Executive Assistant, and no one is getting rich doing that.) My degree (BA in Business) gives me the ability to check off that box on the job application that says “degree?” but otherwise doesn’t seem to do much. I don’t think I’ve ever averaged more than about $32,000/yr in salary and currently I have no medical benefits. There are certainly other factors that contribute to my underemployment/lack of good choices, such as my location and my schedule restrictions (daycare only stays open so long, and travel is all but impossible.)
I don’t regret my education at all, but I often wonder if I had not gotten it would I be at the same place in my career anyhow? I have also considered moving forward with a Masters, but raising two kids and working and working towards an advanced degree seems ominous and I would definitely need the loans to do it. At this point, I’m a generalist in my field and not a specialist. If I had it to do again, I might pick a vocation like RN or CPA, but hindsight is 20/20 right?
I guess I just never imagined that as a college-educated woman I’d be *this close* to maybe not making the mortgage payment or qualifying for state programs or having to admit to anyone that my kid doesn’t have medical. That shame you speak of is alive and well.
Great post. Great blog. :)
I am going through the same thing even though I’m 40! I was an English major who graduated in 1988 and managed to do well in tech writing jobs. But then there was the dot-burst and I had long spells of unemployment. And I detested being a tech writer. I decided to go to law school when I was 36. I also thought about teaching, social work, and being a librarian, but decided on law for several reasons, one of which was that I’d be able to pay my loans.
After graduation, I could not find a job. I was lucky; my dad’s a lawyer and really wanted me to work for him. But it involved moving from Minnesota to Texas, and my Sweetheart had to give up his job. I make more than he did, but we’re struggling on my one income due to my $100K in student loans. (If I had gotten my MLS, I would have borrowed $50K for a job that payed $20K.)
I’ve been an adult through lots of bad economic turns, but I can’t believe it keeps getting worse.
When I graduated from college, I had the same “no job for you” problem. I was hoping to relocate to SoCal, where I’d gone to school– but there were no prospects. So I moved home, dejected, and scraped around looking for anything.
I did wind up in an entry level position in my field (after a few months unemployed), but it was in a horrible upside-down firm, where the real route to promotions was to come in from the field… and of course, I’d been hired to the office. After several months, I worked through their backlog and got the boot. After another few months unemployed, I finally got hired on at my current place– mostly because I’d interned for them while in school.
Some years are worse than others to graduate; it too often seems that your one shot at getting in is straight from college. After that, they’re too interested in your former employers to ever say, “Great schooling” and a position to go with it.
Good luck– I hope your hunt turns up great options. My cousin worked 4 years in a pair of part time teaching programs for different districts (they sound much like the one you were offered), before she finally landed a kindergarten class just after the school year began this year.
{{{{Lauren}}}}
Part of why I stay where I am is because of the social infrastructure thing—I’m not really “from here”; I’ll never be “from here” in the sense that it’s a provincial area and my folks weren’t “from here”—but I’ve been here long enough that I’m well known in labor circles and have a bedrock of connections—a network that took well over a decade to build. I grew up living here, living there, never having a “hometown”. It was a disadvantage to me when I got to be old enough to seek work—not having those “connections”, especially during the Reagan Depression, meant not being able to find a job to help build for a college fund. Having a network of people might help my daughter someday, so I stay. Where my family is from (y’know, where they got off the boat! ;-), the economy is dead and it ain’t comin’ back. Here, it isn’t the best but it’s far from the worst.
Anyway—if you’ve ever thought about applying for the electricial apprenticeship, keep in mind that right about now is the time most locals put the ads in the paper announcing applications. We put ours in in December or January, but some start around Thanksgiving or a little earlier to beat the busyness of the holidays. As an apprentice, you’ll probably work for five years straight, and you’ll probably do less traveling than you’re doing now—for a lot more money (plus, you’ll have a pension and good health insurance—and probably a 401K too, but that would depend on your local—I don’t know where you are in Indiana, but if you’re south of Lafayette you may be in the Danville, Illinois jurisdiction). I’ve been reading your blog for a looooonnnnnngggg time, and I think you’ve got the personality for it.
Let me know if you need a letter of recommendation! Seriously—it’s something to think about. Now’s the time. The Boomers are making the mass exodus into retirement, so there is opportunity—you may have to weather bouts of short-term unemployment, but having a trade (and best of all, having the hiring-hall system—no more bullshit job interviews! yay!) just may be the best form of job security atill available in this modern economy.
Lauren, I’m going through a similar thing right now too. I didn’t go back to work after Shawn was born because he was up 3 and 4 times a night and I was struggling with recurrent breast infections. Now, he’s 3 months old, I’m having a horrible time finding a job in rural upstate NY and my degree means jack shit. (Mine is a BA in psychology) I even have supervisory experience and a ton of non-profit experience and I still can’t find anything. It’s depressing as hell and I also feel like a failure. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think either one of us is actually a failure just young women with young kids in a shitty economy, but I know it’s hard to shake the feeling.
Lauren;
The Indianapolis school district had a fair pile of money set aside last year to get more fresh blood into their system. I know this because they weren’t getting enough college grads and contacted my dad, who’s been out of the game for six years now, to see if he might be interested. It will probably be a harsh environment, but it sure beats Texas, which seems to break new graduates into the field with alarming regularity. (A cousin of mine tried teaching in San Antonio, and I dunno if she even finished her first and only year there.) On the other hand, some people thrive in tough school districts – my dad spent 15 years or so at West Side High School in Gary and left only because he thought he could get a similar or better position in Florida.
If you want to teach, then you need to either get experience or certification in specialized areas. My dad acquired certification in Reading at the high school level, for example (in other words, to help deficient students meet mandated reading requirements, pre-NCLB). He never actually was asked to do that job, but because most school districts consider having someone in at least one of their high schools that can do it a necessity (links up with level of Federal funding available, I guess), he didn’t have a lot of trouble finding teaching positions.
If you love teaching, go where the job is – the support system will develop around you. You don’t act like the hermit type. ;-) It’s harder in terms of your son and his father, but there are ways to deal with that too. As for the debt, I agree with the first post, if accurate – get on forbearance and take five years to get your life together. Also, check out Purdue’s job search setup for alumni. I’ve never used it, but it’s allegedly pretty good for finding jobs for graduates.
I know how hard this all is, Lauren – I’ve had my own version of being stuck in a very deep financial hole as a single parent. But it’s also been ten years since then, and while I’m not living the life of Riley, it’s not bad, either. The first thing you need to do, though, is to find something that both pays the bills and feeds your soul. That will probalby mean leaving the LayFlat area for at least a while, but you do what’s necessary, and you and your son still have a whole lot of living to do.
My two bits…
Lauren, I went to high school at a private school in Indiana, probably about 80 miles NE of West Lafayette. They have an excellent english/humanities program, engage in standardized tests only to satisfy the gods of college admissions, and have a paid internship program (which includes housing). I don’t want to published the link here in the comments, but if you can contact me I will send it to you (can you read my address from your record of comments?). They begin recruiting interns in mid-October for next year, so this would be good timing. It’s a competitive program, but you have the education and interest (making a judgement from what I have read of your postings).
I just moved 3000 miles to escape my old life, but somehow it followed me here. It is the shame that lingers, that I packed with me, brought all this way. The shame that burns my face when people ask “What do you do?”, the shame that follows when I answer.
I never finished college, never could afford it. Tried like hell for loans and grants and until fairly recently was denied. And now I look at my life, facing 30 wondering if the degree is for me or for them. Would it silence people who said “oh, but you were always so smart?” when they look at me now? And the years since have been spent at administrative jobs, typing letters for those who won’t and I wonder if this is all it’s ever going to be. I guess I never thought that the shame of poverty, of the preception of failure was something that college graduates felt too. In my mind the degree was the golden ticket as well, at least that’s how so many of my friends made it seem.
I look at my parents who both graduated college with no debt, how is that possible now? How is it possible to start your life with possibilities instead of burdens?
First of all, Lauren I’m sorry that you have to go through this. It’s a crappy situation, and you don’t deserve it (nor does anyone else). You have fulfilled your part of the implicit agreement that you had with society, and it’s shitty that society doesn’t fulfill its part of the deal.
I am in a different situation than the one most of you people are in (especially those of you with children), but I somewhat know what you are going through.
Back in 2002 I graduated with a degree in programming (a 2½ year degree), just as the buttom fell out of the IT jobmarket in Denmark. However, here we have a decent unemployment system (benifits and all), and education is free, so after having looked for work for a few months, I ended up studying computer science, while working with different temporary jobs.
I was lucky to have a good network that helped me make it through – not to a degree (which I still haven’t got in computer science), but to get a good student job, that lead to a better full-time job, and so on.
Now, I work full time, and study in the evening (if at all), and am working hard to pay off my debts. I get a good pay (I won’t say how much, as it will be meaningless in this context – different living costs and all), but it will still be a few years before I have much money left for myself after paying bills and old debt.
As someone said upthread, positions often requires that you know someone – I know that I have certainly benifitted from knowing others, and I have certainly helped others get jobs – at late as last month, as a matter of fact.
There are major differences between my experience, and yours – the Danish system is vastly different from the US. I don’t have to worry about health care/university costs, and I can get unemployment benefits for much longer than you can in the US.
Lauren — take the electrical apprenticeship!! Really. I ended up doing a blue collar job for most of my working life, after going through college , getting the degree, working in my “field.” (It’s amazing how far afield one’s field can take one.) And it was great. The physical activity was great. The meeting lots of different people was great. And the money was as much as I might have expected in my field anyway. So, here I am 40 years later, retired from it, and it’s still fine. I didn’t have to stop thinking about things, or move out of “the world of ideas” as some of my friends suggested, because I could think about whatever I wanted while I was working.