17. Leaving the Cave of Student Debt

Who am I? I’m just a person, like you. I’m a “Millenial”, raised on the internet, and in that world of rapidly increasing technology and continuously dwindling economic prospects (I can’t remember a time since I entered the work-force at the tender age of 16, that finding a job wasn’t difficult and that complaints about the economy, the price of gas, or the general decline in economic freedom weren’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue). Like most of you, I bought into the great new American myth, that working hard and going to to the best college I could, costs be damned, would guarantee me a place in the economic safe-zone of the American middle class (or perhaps, for a “smart guy” such as myself, a coveted in place in the professional class with all the doctors and lawyers and business executives). Like some of you, it wasn’t a question of whether or not I would go to college, it was a matter of going to the best college I could. And so I worked my ass off all through high school, even putting my mental health on the line, taking honors and AP classes, getting good grades, and joining and leading clubs, sports teams, and all the other extracurriculars designed to pad my resume, ensuring my place at one of the “good schools”.

And then came Senior year, where everyday a pile of glossy brochures from expensive private schools and public state-schools alike awaited me in the mailbox, full of pictures of blandly inter-racial groups of smiling students in preppy clothes, sitting on some grassy lawn with back-packs and books, each school touting its merits as a guaranteed ticket into the coveted fortress of “success” in the ever-dwindling American middle class.

I eventually decided on a small, respectable private school in my state. It was expensive, but with scholarships and grants, the price was comparable to the large, fairly prestigious state-school that was the only other acceptable option for a “smart guy” such as myself. I sent in my early-decision application and got accepted. When the financial aid information came the total price-tag was a mere $25,000 a year. This was down from the whopping $40,000 a year it would have cost without scholarships and other financial aid.

Of course, I was freaking out. That was a lot of money. But it was a U.S News “Great Value” school! It was just as good as the prestigious liberal-arts colleges in the Northeast, and just as well-known in academic circles, but only half the price! What a great deal!

I flailed and resisted. I knew that it would mean graduating with $100,000 of debt under my belt. I considered other options. I wanted to work outdoors. I didn’t want a bland, suburban-professional life of quiet-desperation. I looked at the Peace Corps, but they required a degree, or at least some vocational skill. Of course, now I know that there were lots of other options: Americorps, traveling or a gap-year, working and saving, etc. But at the time, none of this information was easily available to me, at least not as easily available as the deluge of loudspeaker propaganda telling me to go to the best college I could. And even if the info had been readily available, none of these options would have been supported. After all, I was in the TOP TEN. I was in National Honors Society! For me to consider community college, or working, or traveling, or going to a lowly regional-state school would have been equivalent to blasphemy! It would be a sin, goddamnit!

Finally, for all my flailing and fighting, my parents sat me down at the dinner table and made it clear: I had to go to [expensive private school]. Any other choice would require me to move out the day after high-school graduation.

I would be on my own.

Looking back, I wish I would have just done that. But hind-sight is always 20/20, and the frightening prospect of being thrust into the world on my own with no support didn’t hold a candle to the inertial push to make the “responsible choice” and fulfill the destiny prescribed to me from day one of my educational career: go to the best college you can. “And don’t worry about the loans! You’re smart, you’ll get a good job and you’ll pay those off in no time. And then, when you’re done with that, if you still don’t want to be a ‘professional’ you can quit and go live in the woods or whatever it is you want to do with your life, but this way you’ll have the option. And besides, when have we ever steered you wrong.”

*************

And so I went. And I told myself that to get the best experience that I could, I wouldn’t worry about the debt until graduation came.

And this is where the story gets tricky, because college was, for the most part amazing. It was a great school. And for a “smart guy” like myself, it felt so freeing to be challenged, and to be surrounded by other intellectuals, other achievers. The classes were small, rigorous, and discussion based. They challenged and engaged like never before.

There were drawbacks too. The school was tiny (smaller than my high-school, in fact), and the social scene was less-than-ideal. There was a lot of drinking, but no one-night-stands (anybody you hooked up with would inevitably see you every other day in the cafeteria, and would take classes with you too; there was nowhere to hide from your mistakes). I also got to experience that America, despite all the myths and propaganda, is very much a class-based society. Here I was interacting with a class of people entirely unlike the one I had been raised in: the upper-middle class. Most of my fellow students were children of doctors, lawyers, and other well-to-do professionals. Like studying abroad in England, things were mostly similar, but the uncanny differences were so subtle that it was like living in an eery, parallel universe, and made the feeling of alienation that much more palpable.

In fact, the social scene was so dismal that by the end of my first-year, I wanted to leave. But by then I was $25,000 in the hole, and very few of my credits would transfer, so I decided it was best just to see it through to the end. And besides, classes were excellent and I was, above all, an intellectual. I was here to study, not to play. And study I did. I played as well, but my studies always, always came first. And of course, going to such a prestigious liberal-arts college meant that I got to learn quite well exactly all the ways in which my right-wing evangelical parents had, in fact, “steered me wrong” over the years. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being pressured by Christian parents into attending a “good school”, only to be resented for adopting the “PC” beliefs of liberal academia.

To make a long story short, college was, like life, full of ups and downs. But I grew. And I was able to overcome the superstitions and narrow-mindedness in which I had been raised (not without difficulty, mind you). My most cherished experience was the opportunity to study abroad for a semester in China, which was life-changing (and the place I realized, once and for all, how ridiculous the Evangelical world-view actually was….would all these good people simply burn in hell forever because of their mere ignorance of our oh-so American religion?) When I came home, I returned to a better group of friends. My experience in Shanghai had made me hip, worldly, urbane, and gave me enough street-cred to fit in with the hipsters who populated the upper-echelons of my university’s social hierarchy. I eventually realized that the end-game of intellectualism in today’s America is the bandying about of superior tastes in various media (indie music, films, podcasts, etc.). The endless debate over aesthetics served as a wonderfully tedious form of intellectual masturbation, where one can display wits and bourgeois vocabulary, while carefully avoiding any truly meaningful discussion about how to actually improve the world or uplift humanity (that kind of discussion was, after all, hopelessly naïve, earnestness being the paragon of “uncool” behavior, and worse, threatening to our precarious place of collective privilege).

Despite graduating in what turned-out to be a spiritual dead zone, I did learn to sharpen my intellectual sword, and wield it effectively. All that was left was to find a worthwhile foe.

And of course, such a foe would appear a few weeks prior to graduation, when I went into the financial aid office to tally the total amount of loans I would owe for my prestigious liberal-arts degree. The grand total: $80,000. The look in the financial aid worker’s eye as she told me the total gave me the impression that today would be a bad day for her, and that she would likely spend her entire drive home contemplating the value of her job, and possibly her life. My well-intentioned, but ultimately emotionally unavailable roommate/best friend/philosophy major gave me a rather cold rebutt: “You’ve got to be like the Stoics. Take a stoic attitude, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

And while we’re on the subject of the total cost, I should point out that contrary to the constant Right-wing “personal responsibility” refrain about students’ exorbitant lifestyles, I was very frugal in college. I’ll admit, I partied. But for better or worse, my school was located in a small-town with only one, very shady, working-class dive bar. We would go sometimes, to be ironic. But otherwise the drinking occurred at fraternity houses or apartment parties, where charging for alcohol was against the rules. When we bought our own drinks, we bought the cheapest liquor available, or sometimes 4Loko (remember 4Loko, everybody?). The point is, a very liberal estimate would put my total cost of drinking at about $100 a month. Exorbitant? No. Avoidable? Of course. But even assuming I skipped the drinking, this would have saved me a whopping $4800, dropping my total cost to a much more manageable $75,000 worth of debt. The other choice was to not party, of course. And there were many a Saturday night spent doing other things (I didn’t drink for a whole semester, even). But at my school, there were generally two kinds of people, and therefore two options for socializing: those who stayed in and studied on Saturday nights, terrified that they would disappoint their parents by not getting into law-school, and those who partied balls, terrified that they would disappoint their parents by not getting into law-school. Just about everybody was smart, but generally those who partied were more interesting, so that’s what I did.

As for other costs: I worked full-time in the summers and during the semester when I could. I was an RA my sophomore year (and a damn good one, I might add! I never once bitched about the pubic hairs left in the communal bathroom sink). Some semesters, I couldn’t find a job, others, I wouldn’t have been able to handle one on top of my “prestigious” school’s work-load. For one thing, our school worked on a fee-for-semester system, so it was a flat fee regardless of the amount of hours a student took. This meant that reducing hours and working more would have simply made the overall cost more expensive by extending the number of semesters required to graduate. My semester abroad in China turned out to be the cheapest semester I had, on account of a fairly generous scholarship (the Freeman-Asia scholarship, which shortly disappeared following the 2008 financial crisis…which occurred while I was in China). The point is, even if I had lived like a hermit, eating ramen and working a full-time job (assuming that would be possible or sustainable), a generously liberal estimate would lower the total cost of college to perhaps $40,000.

And so there I was, graduating with a cheap-house-mortgage worth of debt. Only in lieu of a cheap house, I had a piece of paper that ostensibly bought me a seat on the Middle-Class Express. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that the train had been overbooked, there were a lot more tickets than there were seats on the train to the “yay-I-can-go-to-the-hospital-without-filing- for-bankruptcy” safety zone.

Having lived in Asia, and having enjoyed my time outside of our glorious Land of Opportunity, I decided that the best option would be teaching ESL in Taiwan. They spoke Chinese too, it was a nicer version of China (or so I’d heard….more porno and less spitting), and most of all, the money was good and the cost of living was low. I would be able to get by with a some-what decent job, and be able to make my minimum payments!

To make a long story short, I found myself teaching ESL at a private, money-mill junior high where I would soon discover that the emphasis was not on education, but on keeping up appearances so that the rich parents could keep the money flowing in.

I worked hard, however. And most importantly, I discovered that I really loved teaching. But the schedule was exhausting. Cojoling and coaxing and “managing” classes of 30-40 junior high students who had absolutely no interest in what I was teaching, working 10-11 hour days left me exhausted every evening. Every night I would go home, beat myself into going for a 30 minute jog, buy some dinner and veg in front of my computer for an hour or so before going to bed. The weekends were often spent in recovery mode. I was drinking a lot, finding myself in a similar situation to college, surrounded by young people who didn’t really know how to socialize, let-off-steam, or otherwise have any sort of fun without getting completely shit-housed. Sometimes I would travel to other parts of the island, but being limited by time and exhaustion, I found myself unable to really explore this beautiful, exotic East-Asian paradise I was living in. Mostly I was seeing a lot of my apartment, my classroom/office, and the commute in between.

To make matters worse, my financial situation was incredibly disheartening. By Taiwanese standards, I was making a very good salary (comparable to a middle-management position in a local company). After paying for my apartment, food, and daily expenses, I was sending about half of my salary home making just-above the minimum payments on my loans. On my federal loan, I would watch online as the $300 monthly payment was divided as follows: $200 or so towards interest, $100 towards the principle. This was, after all, the “graduated” scale that allowed me to make a “reasonable” monthly payment. This was only one of three loans I was paying on, all of which were being paid down in a similarly snail-paced manner.

To make matters worse, I was surrounded by other foreigners from the more reasonable English-speaking countries: places like Canada, Australia, the UK or New Zealand, where college tuition was reasonable. Most of them were working just as hard as I was, but they were able to build a large savings that they would use to explore the world, or put towards a house, or simply slow down for a while and explore their interests. They also spent a lot of money on booze.

*************

Over months, the reality of the situation began to set in: assuming I was able to sustain it, this wage-slave existence would be my “life” for at least the next ten years. Maybe, after ten years of exhausting myself, dedicating my life to “work”, I would emerge at the victorious “zero”. I would finally be in that lucky position of having nothing, instead of that negative-something, that debt, that hole. I thought about how people in my parents’ generation would talk about how hard they had worked, how they had started out with nothing, and how it would take me ten of my best years before I would be lucky enough to get to that point. Maybe then, once I was in my early thirties and almost certainly exhausted and deteriorated, maybe then I might be able to go spend a few months in a Buddhist monastery, or work on an organic farm, or travel, or simply live my life. I found myself sinking into desperation and despair in any quiet moment, terrified of the prospect of what lay before me. I was quickly reaching the end of my rope.

It was around this time that a number of things converged in my life and began to facilitate a major change. First of all, Occupy Wall Street happened. I watched along with the rest of the world as what began as a small protest in Zuccotti Park took the world by storm, all thanks to the heroic NYPD officer who valiantly pepper-sprayed a 20-something girl right in the face for no apparent reason. The protests sprang up all over the world, including Taipei. Inspired by a colleague of mine, who would also attend the protest, I made my way to Taipei that weekend. The protest itself was quite mild (a march through the Taipei 101’s high-end mall, followed by general congregating and sitting outside the entrance). For me, it was life-changing. It was life-changing because all of that political energy that had been for years been building up inside as I helplessly watched the American political-economic circus/shit-show unfold on my computer screen was finally channeled somewhere in the real-world. I was no longer just fuming as I read, lurking behind my screen. Instead, I was using my body, I had moved somewhere. I had participated, in however small a way, in the world I wanted to see, instead of merely thinking about it and wishing for it.

I would never be the same.

For me, Occupy Wall Street was a spiritual awakening. Afterward I began to read and discover the truths behind the 2008 Financial Crisis, the monetary system, banking, and capitalism in general. Whereas before I was a typical liberal, blaming the problems of the system on the crazy, Right-wing Republicans with whom I had grown up, always telling myself that “if we can just elect the right officials, if we can just fix the government, everything will be better.” Now I began to realize that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the system worked. The problem lay at the root of our society, at the root of capitalism, it wasn’t a mere problem of trimming the branches of the tree.

I became a radical.

Or rather, I simply realized what I always was. And as scary as the word sounds, a radical is simply somebody who looks at the root of the problem. And that described me to a tee. For my entire life, I had never been interested-in or fooled-by superficial solutions to problems. It was who I was. I was the kind of person who had always preferred to get things done at work rather than simply “look busy”, somebody who was interested in actually finding solutions to problems rather simply changing the window dressing on a condemned house. And I had always, always, always been getting shit for it.

And so it was that I became inspired again. I was filled with a new energy, and a new zeal. This was our moment to change the world, and it was time to do our part. Each person can only start to change the world from his or her sphere of influence, no matter how small. For me, it was teaching and the classroom.

I threw myself into being the best teacher possible. I wanted to use my talents to improve first, my classroom, and then, one-day, the system. I worked hard, creating my own inspiring materials and lesson plans about people who had fought to make the world a better place. In this way I was able to forget for a little while about the financial hole I was buried in. And so it was that I found myself pushing my limits, working hard to improve myself and my profession.

Naively, I assumed my efforts would be appreciated by my higher-ups. And of course, I was wrong. Assuming that, due to my hard work, diligence, and passion for improving my little corner of the world of education, I would receive an “A” grade at my mid-year evaluation (and the corresponding bonus that came with it) I was shocked to receive a “C”, with no bonus whatsoever (bonuses being a standard part of Taiwanese employment). This was, of course, a slap in the face. I was told in so many words (first in the subtle, Taiwanese “face-saving” way by my local boss, and then more bluntly and directly by my foreign boss) that I needed to quit “rocking the boat.” My efforts to improve the curriculum would be seen as threatening to the authority of the management (despite the fact that the curriculum was grossly inappropriate for Junior High; they were using American Elementary school textbooks to teach junior high students… so my task was to make “The Cat Went to the Beach” an interesting and relevant topic for 14 year olds). Moreover, any attempt at improvement, even only to my classes, would be seen as a sign of incompetence of the administration and might make parents question the integrity of the program. The school would “lose face” and, more importantly, money.

So here I was, spurned and derided for attempting to be a professional at my profession, busting my ass to send half of my income home to a bunch of coke-head sociopaths on Wall Street who “loaned” me money that they had conjured out of thin air. I began to realize that my true job was more of a prison guard. Really, my job was to supervise and detain children while their parents wage-slaved. The true purpose of this “Education” system was to teach students to accept the reality that their lives would be marked by obedience to indifferent, incompetent authority and that most of their waking hours would be spent doing meaningless, trivial tasks in order to benefit somebody who couldn’t care less about them.

The final straw came when a change in Taiwanese tax code meant that another 15 percent of my income would be taken in a refundable tax hike. Again, the money would be returned when I filed my taxes the next year, but in the meantime my income would drop by a full loan payment. In a panic, I skyped with my Mom about what to do. Rather than offer any help, or even words of solace, she told me that I simply needed to “take responsibility.”

After a quick, four-letter rebuttal, I promptly closed my laptop. We didn’t talk again for another year and a half.

But take responsibility I did. Being unable to make the payment, and knowing that my credit would be ruined no matter what I did, I decided to take a break from paying off my loans. I began to explore the possibility of simply never paying them back.

It seemed to me that wasting my labor, my talent, my energy, and my life in order to feed into a system that valued nothing except for the accumulation of money, was the height of irresponsibility. I began to realize that my debt was keeping me trapped in a job and a life that I didn’t want, that I knew was bad for everybody and everything. And I knew that most of the people in my generation, and in capitalist society in general, are in the same boat. This system, and the people who ran it, didn’t care about me, they didn’t care about the environment we lived in, they didn’t care if I had a house to live in or food to eat, they only cared about money. And I was, every month, sending them a check, of my own free-will and volition, to keep this system running. And why? Because I was afraid. Afraid of having my credit ruined. Afraid of being unable to buy a house. Afraid of putting my ability to participate in the system in jeopardy. Mostly, I was afraid of being labeled a dead-beat. A bum. Somebody who wasn’t responsible. Somebody who didn’t care about the world. And yet, it was my care for the world and my desire to make it a better place (either by placating my parents, who I assumed knew what was best for me, or by bucking against the corrupt system) that had brought me to this place.

And yet, there I was. And my chances of buying a house were already ruined, assuming I even wanted or would would be able to own a house in America anyways. I was overseas, forced to look abroad for gainful employment and access to basic necessities (Taiwan has an excellent public healthcare system). But I was away from the reaches of debt collectors.

And so it was, after having the iniquities of the banking system confirmed by my new girlfriend (who was quitting her job at a prominent international bank in order to go travel and explore), I determined never to pay my student loans. I would never return to America if I had to. I would make them chase me across the whole world if that’s what they wanted. I would fight like hell. But I am still proud to say that I will never pay that money.

So how has my life changed since then?

It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s sure as hell been better.

I was able to save my money, and when my contract ended and (surprise) it was not re-signed I found myself jobless and, for the first time, not in a panic. I moved to a house in the hills outside of my city, and spent my unemployment improving myself. I studied Chinese. I learned guitar. I began practicing yoga. I lost weight, ate healthier and began to improve my mental and physical health. I wrote and explored and studied and traveled. I was poor in money (living off of my savings and taking odd substitute jobs to supplement) but rich in time and life.

Eventually I returned to teaching, but on my own terms. After saving and living comfortably in my mountain home for a while, I came to realize that I shouldn’t waste this opportunity on myself. The true reason I was able to set myself free was so that I could work to help set others free, not just from student debt, but from our entire egregiously unjust and destructive economic system of which student debt is merely part and parcel.

Around New Year’s day of 2014 I condensed all of my belongings into what I could fit into a backpack (travel guitar not included), sold or gave away everything else, and moved to an organic farm to volunteer my time, directly helping and learning to make the world a better place. I learned a lot about myself and I discovered how beautiful it is to work for the sheer pleasure of doing something good, not because you have to, or because you need money to survive, but because I wanted to. If labor were sex, I’d spent my whole life being a prostitute, and now I was actually making love.

And as romantic as it sounds (and indeed it was and is), it was also an extraordinarily difficult and painful year. I began a spiritual journey that forced me to look at the deepest, ugliest parts of myself, to question anything and everything, to test my whole being for weaknesses and errors and faults, and to fix those faults.

I know I’m not a saint, or a guru, or really even that extraordinary. Or really, I guess I am extraordinary.

But so are you.

So is anyone who has the courage to make the often-difficult choices that are required to realize that extraordinary self that so often lies hidden underneath the ocean of inertia and fear and all the other things that we must struggle against to set ourselves free. This struggle for our true self, not our mere comfort or pleasure, is the purpose of human existence.

And ultimately that’s what this struggle is about. It’s not about mere economics. Or politics. It’s about setting ourselves free, both as individuals and as a society. It’s about realizing our potential in every way, and not wasting this precious opportunity of human existence.

This is your life. How do you want to spend it?