Suck it up

“Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma.”

I’m sorry, but why is it she has to live in a large city with a high cost of living? When times are tight, you do what you have to do – I did. If that means living in less than ideal circumstances, then you do it. If that means you don’t buy a new car, you don’t. If that means you eat out once in a blue moon, so be it. If that means you get roommates, you find them. If that means you live without cable, high-speed internet, and other luxuries, you say bye-bye to them. Why is it that the youth and young adults in today’s America think they are entitled to a certain standard of living they had while living off mom’s and dad’s dime? Mom and dad earned the right to live at that level. What have you done to earn the right?

The quote comes from an article about a young lady with almost $100,000 in student loan debt for attaining her Bachelor’s Degree from a prestigious school. She has been unable to find a job that enables her to pay back the loans, so she is deferring them (which means the interest is still applied, but she doesn’t have to make payments on the balances). The problem is not that she isn’t finding a job – she isn’t taking responsibility. When bills are looming you have to make an effort – you have to take whatever job you can get to pay the bills and continue to look for something better. That’s how it works – that’s how it has always worked. You don’t get to cry about all the debt you took on to get your degree. She could have gone to a less expensive school. It doesn’t seem it would have made a difference in her job prospects (and I seriously doubt it would have, even in better economic times). However, it would have made a huge difference in the amount of the loans she took out, and her ability to repay them.

Let’s look into this story a little deeper and see what’s going on. She graduated “with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women's studies.” Did she go into a field with prospects for high paying salaries upon graduation? That doesn’t sound like a medical or law degree, and it isn’t a business degree. So what exactly was she expecting upon graduation? Was she expecting some company to offer her a $50,000 per year managerial position, or a $45,000 per year entry level engineering job? It sounds to me like someone should have done a little better planning for the future and less worrying about which college to attend.

“Ms. Munna understands this tough love, buck up, buckle-down advice. But she also badly wants to call a do-over on the last decade. ‘I don't want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back,’ she said. ‘It feels wrong to me.’”

Well, you know what feels wrong to me? I repaid my student loans and don’t even have a degree to show for it. Why should you get a free pass? I at least had the intelligence to pick a field of study with some salary potential. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way. So suck it up and start taking some responsibility. There’s no reset button in life.