Just don't do it! Srsly!

Hey, ya'll!

I'm a Fool for School!

I'm here to remind y'all who are grads and undergrads to avoid private/institutional loans. If your school offers you one to "help pay expenses," DON'T DO IT! Stick to federal loans (e.g. Stafford, Direct, Perkins, etc.) if you need a loan. Or credit cards, which can be wiped during bankruptcy. In fact, if you, personally, have to pay A DIME for grad school, DON'T GO! Unless it's a professional degree with actual job opportunities. You know, like law or business school. And even then, pray for a job every night!

Why do you need to SAY NO TO PRIVATE STUDENT LOANS? Because the school will take your stuff if you're out of work and can't pay them back. Srsly! The government will take your stuff too (eventually) but they now have all sorts of fancy programs to help you when you're in trouble. You have to screw up royally for the feds to come after you now. That may even change a bit (for the better) in the next few years (I hope). But your school or a private lender? They'll take grandma's dying bequest to you and sell it for $1 to apply to the debt. Srsly!

(A freakin' "read more" link should go here, but Blogger's treating me like I'm her bitch.)

My tale of College Misery:

Some readers will recall those halcyon days of the late 80s and early 90s when professors were on the lookout for THE NEXT GREAT SCHOLAR. They kept an eagle-eye on their students and directed notables with a scholastic aptitude to "think about grad school." At one time, this was a Good Thing [TM] because the expansion of tertiary education in the US was forecast to require more workers (which it did). Oh, and there was that report with the prediction of MASSIVE retirements in the humanities that was going to create a need for more PhDs; same eventually was said of the sciences. Too bad those people never retired. (And when/if they did retire, those faculty lines got converted to adjunct contracts in too many cases.)

But, by the mid-90s, this job trajectory was starting to prove problematic. After telling me I was "gifted," my undergraduate mentor proceeded to "help" me apply to an esoteric grad program at a VERY EXPENSIVE school for a discipline with about a dozen or so departments across the country. She also told me to expect to have to pay for the first year because "that seemed to be how things run now." Great teacher, bad career advice-giver.

In those Luddite-lovin', pre-Internet days, the information about grad programs was scarce, and job statistics of graduates from those programs were all but non-existent. Programs filled pamphlets with descriptions of all the fancy, fantastic jobs their grads got! Gee, if you just worked hard, and performed well, the future was ripe for the pickin'! Except it wasn't. Once inside the belly of the beast, the other grad students told you the REAL STORY, like how those fancy jobs had been acquired without the degree you were working to get or from a different degree (from a program before this school or after), or how those fancy jobs were examples from 10-20 YEARS PRIOR at institutions/workplaces that no longer existed or hadn't hired in a decade. But the (unwitting? delusional? deadwood?) proffies were still lying when they told us we could expect to graduate and find TT jobs for $45-55K a year. It's 15 years later and few disciplines (save the professional schools and many sciences) can expect to start out making that NOW!

So, yeah, in 1995 I took out this new-fangled thing to help me pay that rabidly high tuition: an institutional loan. It was relatively small as student loans go: just $5k. It was to replace a Perkins loan (they ran out of money! wow! how could THAT happen?!?!) so I took it in lieu of quitting an almost-complete degree. It's been a shitstorm ever since! They would lose deferment forms. They would lose forbearance forms. They demanded payment even though I was in the 6-month "find a job, you deadbeat" grace period after getting the degree. They even demanded payment while I was in deferment while attending another school. By the end, I had paid it down to $4K and was working as an adjunct.

Enter the economic meltdown of 2008! (Yeah, over a decade later thanks to them finally honoring deferments). Job loss. Income reduction. Consolidation loan finalized. One loan disappears off records. No idea this isn't normal; apparently the loan record remains with a zero balance for those of you who didn't know (like me!). Loan apparently slips through the cracks because, guess what, it's not eligible! Reappears on records at time of lawsuit. (Why did it disappear? Nobody can tell me!) Demand for payment. Inability to repay what they want. Arrival of sheriffs to levy property for the payment of $4K. No, wait -- it's now $7K! Holy crap!

Morals of the story:

1.) DON'T TAKE ANY INSTITUTIONAL STUDENT LOANS! Don't do it. Run away. Live under a bridge. Just. Don't. Do. It. Srsly!

2.) If your school thinks adjuncting their courses = student aid, they are a crap school and you need to RUN AWAY NOW! As a graduate student teacher/ teaching assistant, you deserve tuition remission and a stipend equal to a living wage ABOVE THE POVERTY LINE. Full stop.

3.) You know how all those debt gurus tell you that student loan debt is "good debt"? Liars. All of them. Don't over-use your credit cards, but, if you have to, use them for books and living expenses. Don't use loan money for anything but tuition and major expenses like health insurance. Your credit cards can be wiped or re-arranged in bankruptcy. STUDENT LOANS ARE WITH YOU FOR LIFE! You can and will bounce back from bankruptcy, but how will it feel when you have to tell mom that some sheriff took her mom's favorite brooch for auction? You know, the one that's been in the family since 1923. The crappy piece of costume jewelry that everyone remembers gram wearing in her wedding photo. They'll take it, you can bet on it. And they'll also take your computer and television and books etc.

4.) People have forgotten the controversy of the early 00s when several colleges and universities openly admitted (and were praised in some places for) capriciously raising tuition to compete with one another. Notice how no one mentions that anymore, especially since those schools found ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY ways to spend that extra income (new buildings, better dorms, coaches whose salaries rival and often exceed those of professional coaches, rock-climbing walls in the rec center, rabid expansion of administrative staff and their salaries, etc.) while simultaneously writing off their cash-strapped grads and faculty (while also expanding the ranks of the former and shrinking the latter). How about helping your alumni, colleges? Or not making their lives Hell just because you can? Some of y'all have larger endowments now than you did in the 80s, so why not spend it instead of "investing" it to make some businessmen and businesswomen more wealthy than they already are?

5.) Don't be a fool! Don't go to grad school! (At least not if you or your parents are footing the bill!) Srsly!

Researcher Smackdown

Some of my research students are among the idiots and assholes we deal with in class. It's a depressing venn diagram, believe me.

Disobeying Darcie: You actually told me, “I don’t wash your glassware. You hired me to do research, not to be your maid.” Are you kidding? I hired you because all the smart kids had signed up to work for other professors. You are damned lucky to work for such a nice guy like me. Other people’s research students do more than just wash a couple of extra test tubes.

Nathaniel Nobrains: You are a chemical engineer who knows no chemistry. What school would let you graduate? Oh, right, I forgot. You went here as an undergrad. Go drive a train, you moron.

Willnotgraduate Wilma: After hiring you from the computer science department and training you for two months, you disappear. I told your advisor that I was concerned about you. It was not a pleasant feeling when he started laughing, like he was hearing an old joke again. I think the joke was, “who’s the next professor who will hire this dipshit?” I’m the punch line.

Overworked Olivia: I’m both impressed and annoyed that you made a graph showing that you consistently do half an hour more grading each week than other grad students. I don’t care. Here’s a graph for you - it won’t make you happier but it should make you more agreeable to my very reasonable expectations of teaching assistants.

Arithmetic Ava: Thanks for complaining that professors back in the motherland don’t make their research students do so much math. Your country’s been occupied more times than an airplane bathroom. Sure, that’s probably not entirely because their scientists can’t do calculus but you know what they say... You don’t know? They say: shut up, learn to integrate, and get to work.

Ah summer! It's enough to make me look forward to teaching this fall.