by Kristin Rogers

Created on: May 03, 2008

So you're supposed to go to college, then get a perfect job, and live happily ever after The thing about it is, I wish that I hadn't gone to college, gotten the perfect job and gained the experience that is keeping me from getting the ideal job that I want. Finishing school with $85,000 in debt and being able to do absolutely nothing with my B.A. degree is something I wish I could have known a long time ago. Now with hindsight I am able to see that going to an out-of-state school was not a bad choice, but the way that I did it was.

I learned my lesson of credit cards long ago watching my parents struggle with paying them back. The funny thing is that credit card debt would be far easier to deal with, even in an equal amount of debt, than college loans. It should have been a red flag when the ability to claim bankruptcy is oh so easy for credit card debt, but the burden of college loans can never be erased. College loans will and can survive anything and cannot be eliminated in anyway. The best hope is to get a job with a hospital, school, or the military that can help to erase the debt with a minimal contract of the next few years of your life. Honestly, if I could I would claim bankruptcy and go through the whole rapture of seven years of awful credit, but it's not that easy. College debt is the grim reaper of money.

I would sooner be a grandparent than have my college debt paid off. Sure, being in college you think "somehow it'll all work out" or "everyone is just like me and if everyone else is in debt and survives". Then you get out of college and the reality check hits. I hear horror stories of people changing their phone numbers/address just to avoid the companies or telling the companies that they have to choose between food and making a payment. For those of us who actually would like to get a new car/house someday and will have to depend on our credit rating this isn't the best idea.

Of course, there are always options. Going to the bookstore to buy your books is ONE of the most insane ideas that are suggested to you from your college. There are multiple online websites that allow you to buy your book sometimes as much as a penny when it might be a $120 in the bookstore. You can find people in your major who might have just taken the class last semester. Additionally, you are able to sell your books back for a price, which you control, that is guaranteed to be more than the ten or twenty dollars that the bookstore offers to buy your book back for.

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