So the other morning, while I was getting ready to take Molly to see her grandparents, I overheard this report on the Today Show which asked whether it was worth it to get a college degree these days. The report featured a young woman who had gone to college, gotten a degree, but had not been able to find a job in her field of study. In the meantime, her student loans were coming due, so, of course, she had to "settle" for a job as an account rep for some company or another. I know what you're thinking: Wow. That's terrible. God, this economy SUCKS! But wait--let me tell you the rest of the story. This poor young, economy-flogged, loan-beaten woman had gotten a degree in French and Italian, and her dream job was to travel the world as an interpreter. Yeah.
It reminded me of another report I read a few years ago about young people coming out of college, not being able to repay their student loans, and then being brow beaten by their lenders. That story featured a young woman whose father had died when she was a young teen. Her mother had been a homemaker, so they were left without an income. But this girl's dream had always been to attend NYU, so even though they couldn't afford it, she enrolled there. She took out 2 sets of student loans and her mother took out a loan to pay for her 4-year degree. She studied some obscure branch of art history and upon graduating, promptly moved to San Francisco (one of the most expensive cities in the country) to find her dream job in some haughty gallery. Only, she couldn't find a job. So she worked as a waitress. Part time. Because she couldn't demean her NYU-educated self by waiting tables as her full time job. So she couldn't repay her loans, and now they were leaning on her mom, too. Those nasty student loan companies!
Maybe I'm a bitch (people have said it), but I don't feel sorry for either one of these people or for the countless other young people like them who have no concept of reality and no respect for it either. Perhaps I should be more empathetic. God knows that when I chose a major, I chose biology because I liked it. It interested me more than anything else. I wasn't thinking, Hmmm...now, you really can't do anything with a B.S. in biology. Job opportunities were the furthest thing from my mind when I started gobbling up courses like Spring Flora 403 and Microbiology 314. But by the time I was a senior, I had figured out that to find gainful employment, I would have to go on and get a Master's degree and probably a Ph.D. Another 4-6 years in school--hunkered down in a lab studying one, single facet of life no less--didn't appeal to me, though, so I put aside my wistful, naive but-I-really-enjoy-it desires and did the practical thing. I went to law school. Wait...huh? Never mind. That's not the point.
The point is, these young women--and so many of their peers--are not victims of the economy or of evil lenders. They are victims of their own impractical idealism. They are singularly focused on what they want and what makes them happy and what feels good. They never think about what lies ahead or about what might not feel as good, but is practical.
The first girl I mentioned? I'm sorry, but get real! There are a finite number of jobs for professional globe-trotting French and Italian interpreters, and I'm guessing that there's not much turnover in those positions. And if you aren't the lucky one who gets one of those few jobs...well, Middle America doesn't have much need for French and Italian interpreters. She should have had a back-up plan, like a double-major in secondary education so that she could go teach in a high school somewhere if all else failed. Would that be ideal? No, but I'm going to guess that it pays more than an account rep for some satellite radio company.
The second girl? Where do I begin? First, take a tip from the Rolling Stones: You can't always get what you want. My dream was to go to Notre Dame. We couldn't afford it. I knew that without even being told. I compromised my dream and went to a much less expensive school, and I had a perfectly wonderful experience. In fact, I wouldn't trade it for the world. More importantly, no one is threatening to foreclose on my parents over unpaid loans now. See, this goes back to another complaint I have about this generation: They've never been told "no." Yes, her dream had always been to matriculate at NYU, but she and her mother clearly couldn't afford it. Her mother should have said "no." Her conscience should have said "no." But she went. Once there, she could have made the most of her situation and studied something that would have made her almost immediately employable--education, business, marketing--but instead, she studied a very particular thread of art history. And then moved to San Francisco. (You can't always get what you want.) And then went without a job for months while she waited for her dream job to pop up. (You can't always get what you want.) And then only deigned to take a part-time job because it was just unthinkable to work full time in a field that wasn't her dream field. (But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.)
ACCOUNTABILITY! That's the word I've been searching for this whole time. Instead of blaming the economy or student loan venders or their colleges, these young adults need to just stand up and be accountable for the choices that they made in life. Suck it up and deal. They chose to chase their Disney dreams and place that ahead of the security of their future, and now they want everyone to say, "Awwww...life is just so unfair! I hate that for you!" Sorry. I just can't be that person. And it really irks me that nobody out there wants to call them on it. Instead, they're featured in the news like little martyrs to the economy. (Although, in the case of the first girl, the money adviser who filed the report did say, "She waited too long to get a different job. She should have been working somewhere else while she was looking for her dream job.") It's just gross to me because there are so many people out there who compromised their dreams, found happiness someplace else, and never even asked for a hug, let alone loan forgiveness.
