For the last four years of my life, I’ve lived on student loans (as do most people in my line of business). It’s not a complicated process… in fact, the steps go as follows: 1) every winter I fill out a FAFSA and Loan Application, 2) sometime in the Spring I walk into the Financial Aid office at my school and casually say, “Give me the max Hoss (not actually someone’s name… or even something I actually call anyone… moving on…)” 3) I pick up a check for my living expenses in the fall.
The fall checks amount to what people on welfare typically call “poverty,” or “poor as #$%@” in other circles. The big money goes to the amount being paid to the school. That amount has always simply been “numbers” (at least in my mind). The numbers are also very tricky because they’re split up over subsidized, unsubsidized, Perkins, institutional, and private loans (I know…. It’s as complicated as it is mind-numbing…). The point is that I’ve never seen the grand total on one line of a balance sheet… Until last Friday (we’ll call it black Friday… and definitely not because I'm “in the black”). I finally saw a grand total… it had an effect on me that was different than any other number I’ve ever encountered. I immediately started to agonize over how I would pay it all back, and how long it was going to take, and how complicated it is to have to defer the payments until I can actually afford to make said payments… After seeing the number, I sat through a meeting that lasted an hour and a half. All I learned during that meeting was that if I don’t pay back the number, at some point someone will sue me (unless of course I’ve carefully filled out all of the paperwork that was too overwhelming/complicated to understand).
I'm not sure why I'm writing about this, as it sounds like I'm complaining about something I chose to do. Like punching myself in the face then complaining that it hurts… well it’s not that way. In fact, I live my life by a certain set of rules and rule #7 is never complain to anyone about the consequences of something you chose to do. So I'm telling you this because well… it was either this or writing about my recent mandatory urine sample. Luckily for you rule #237 is don’t talk about mandatory urine sampling… unless you absolutely have to.
The fall checks amount to what people on welfare typically call “poverty,” or “poor as #$%@” in other circles. The big money goes to the amount being paid to the school. That amount has always simply been “numbers” (at least in my mind). The numbers are also very tricky because they’re split up over subsidized, unsubsidized, Perkins, institutional, and private loans (I know…. It’s as complicated as it is mind-numbing…). The point is that I’ve never seen the grand total on one line of a balance sheet… Until last Friday (we’ll call it black Friday… and definitely not because I'm “in the black”). I finally saw a grand total… it had an effect on me that was different than any other number I’ve ever encountered. I immediately started to agonize over how I would pay it all back, and how long it was going to take, and how complicated it is to have to defer the payments until I can actually afford to make said payments… After seeing the number, I sat through a meeting that lasted an hour and a half. All I learned during that meeting was that if I don’t pay back the number, at some point someone will sue me (unless of course I’ve carefully filled out all of the paperwork that was too overwhelming/complicated to understand).
I'm not sure why I'm writing about this, as it sounds like I'm complaining about something I chose to do. Like punching myself in the face then complaining that it hurts… well it’s not that way. In fact, I live my life by a certain set of rules and rule #7 is never complain to anyone about the consequences of something you chose to do. So I'm telling you this because well… it was either this or writing about my recent mandatory urine sample. Luckily for you rule #237 is don’t talk about mandatory urine sampling… unless you absolutely have to.
2 comments:
so would this be a bad time to bring up the $50 you owe me?
You can bring it up...
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