An Annotated Transcript of Poor Student Loan Choices
INT – CRAPPY APARTMENT – DAY: Chipped, dirty dishes are scattered across the couch and the coffee table. A chubby twentysomething wearing a camisole and boxers, REBECCA MCCARTHY JAMES, chews on her thumbnail and stares at her cracked flip phone. After taking several deep breaths and wiping her glasses on her shirt, she punches the green button to call. The phone rings several times, and a woman, JENNIFER, answers.
JENNIFER (V.O.): Hi I’m Jennifer thanks for calling the Department of Education Loans Servicing Center social security number please.
RMJ (rising from her seated position): Sure! Okay! Sure! It is [redacted].
JENNIFER (V.O.): Can you confirm your last name.
RMJ: McCarthy James? No wait, just James.
JENNIFER (V.O.): Full address including city state and zip code.
RMJ: (pacing, mumbles her address)
JENNIFER (V.O.): And we have your number as [redacted].
RMJ: Uh huh!
JENNIFER (V.O.): And we have your email as rmccarthyjames@gmail.com?
RMJ: Yup!
JENNIFER (V.O.): How can I help you today Rachel.
RMJ: Well, the, um, I. Well, I’m not really. I only make like $[embarrassing] a month? So I need that forbearance or deferment or whatever.
JENNIFER (V.O.): Do you want me to lower your monthly rate.
RMJ: No? I mean, I am not great at making rent here.
JENNIFER (V.O.): Are you unemployed or applying for unemployment insurance.
RMJ: No. I mean, kind of? I tutor basic composition, like, helping junior college students with their papers about their best vacation and why plagiarism is bad and why Death of a Salesman is awesome. And they’re just getting back from summer and they still want to be lazy and never work on their homework in advance, so there is no need for me. So I only work like 10 hours a week right now. You know, because my work basically seasonal? I’ll be working like 50 hours a week in like two months, though, so I can totally pay you then.
JENNIFER (V.O.): And do you have a profile on a job hunting site such as Monster.com [So you can get a soul sucking corporate job that gives you no time to work on writing or play bubble popper and ruins your marriage because stress.]
RMJ: Yes, totally. [Assuming that they still have my resume from 2008 when I uploaded it in the precious few months between my graduation from college and the collapse of the economy. ]
JENNIFER (V.O.): Okay, we can send you some paperwork for a temporary forbearance -
RMJ (terrible panic because of desperate fear of paperwork, which is what led to this whole phone call in the first place): NO!! Can’t you just get me the forbearance thing like over the phone?
JENNIFER (V.O.): Well, the problem is that you’ve only got 483 days left of forbearance —
RMJ: OK, fine! [That sounds like basically forever.]
JENNIFER (V.O.): But your interest continues to accumulate —
RMJ: Yeah. [Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's cool, please stop making me think about the interest!]
JENNIFER (judgmental pause, V.O.): Okay, I guess you can do that but -
RMJ: Okay!
JENNIFER (V.O.): Your next payment will be due on [date in the future by which I will surely be raking the dollars, for real this time].
RMJ: Okay! Thank you Jennifer! Thank you so much. Have a great day!
JENNIFER (V.O.): Have a good day and thank you for calling the student loan direct servicing center.
CUT TO: ONE YEAR LATER: RMJ opens a white envelope, whistling a happy tune until she sees a trailing list of numbers with no decimal point in sight.
CUE: Horrified screams at decades of student loan payments that are higher than mortgage payments, like the Obamas but minus the wild success.
FADE OUT
Rachel McCarthy James is a writer who honestly believes putting that drink on her credit card is a good choice, just this once. She’s originally from Kansas, but right now she lives up a mountain in Virginia with her husband and their two cats.
“JENNIFER (V.O.): And do you have a profile on a job hunting site such as Monster.com [So you can get a soul sucking corporate job that gives you no time to work on writing or play bubble popper and ruins your marriage because stress.]”
I’ve got to admit I’m starting to get really annoyed with the whole Any Real Job Will Keep Me From Pursuing My Very Important Artistic Dreams And Ruin My Life trope, and I see it an awful lot on this site (probably because this site seems to cull the majority of its posts from professional or aspiring writers rather than a broader range of people). Repeatedly reading about the foolhardy financial choices made by creative-types who want to live their entire lives in pursuit of all of their dreams is making me feel curmudgeonly. Get a job. Pay your bills. Write in your spare time. Or at the very least (bat signal for Mike Dang) give us a broader range of perspectives. Surely I’m not the only person in the world who once wanted to be carefree and creative and wound up being happy working a “soul sucking corporate* job” and loves not being chased by collections agencies all the time. Can we get a story about that?
(This is not a dig at Rachel, whose piece I enjoyed, or meant to diminish the perspectives of the great writers who contribute here, but more of a general editorial comment.)
*OK nonprofit but I still have to wear a suit.
@MuffyStJohn preach. Sometimes I read these as “I have a significant other who has a soul-sucking corporate job so that I can remain an artist/writer/musician/crafter” and it bums me out.
@MuffyStJohn Thanks for the comment. We are definitely always trying to show a range of perspectives. Yesterday we had two job-related features: one long feature by a person who worked in IT and moved to Kosovo and Iraq to pay off his debt, and the other was about someone who finished a degree in library science and did paid work at an elections office in Canada. Also recent: a young woman who wore a pig suit and sold ham, someone who is pursuing a career in invasive plants management, and an intern at NASA. Of course, the great majority of people who write things for websites or elsewhere are, well, writers, so it will inevitably skew that way. We’re happy to take pitches from people of all backgrounds any time.
@Mike Dang I appreciate that, Mike. And I didn’t mean to imply that the site offers only one perspective; it just leans heavily on contributions from writers/creatives, and many of them seem to be stuck in the same predicament (that is: “I can’t make money doing what I want to be doing, and so I suffer dire financial consequences”). Maybe I just want to grab these people by the shoulders and shake them because I used to think the way they do (i.e, cubicles and collared shirts will destroy my soul/take away some element of who I am). But sometimes growing up and getting your financial shit together means giving up some of your dreams and getting new ones.
You know I am forever your fangirl and I will love the Billfold until I die (or you leave and give control to an Ayn Rand fan).
@MuffyStJohn This. I am as much a special-snowflake-nobody-can-destroy-my-dream as anyone, but last year I received some very good advice from a writing mentor. He told us that it is not a compromise to have day job – it’s an essential part of being an artist. It feeds you, literally and figuratively. Very few of my favourite writers were full-time writers when they made their best work.
Not that I enjoyed working a 14-hour shift on Saturday…
@notetoself this is true! i am a creative-writery-type and i have a day job. it is in academia, so i am surrounded by people who are also creative and intelligent and will talk to me about the writers i like or read something i’ve written and give me feedback. and while i don’t make loads of money or anything, i make enough to mostly pay my bills and enjoy my life. and i still write. maybe not as much as i would if i were *only* writing, but i do still get inspired and write.
@Mike Dang curious about this! i’ve been doing some cool things lately that i would love to write about and submit to a couple The Awl blogs but i am not a professional writer and do not know the submission process. do i just send in a little pitchy email with some ideas & samples?
(is there any compensation?)
Email me! mike@thebillfold.com
@MuffyStJohn Agree. As a person with a journalism degree who sold out for a corporate marketing job long, long ago, I find it tiresome. Few jobs require a person to work so many hours that there is no time left for writing or any other creative pursuit.
I feel like Cal Newport (study hacks blog) could really add something of value to this discussion re: his career craftsman philosophy.
So did your name change from Rebecca to Rachel through this phone call?
@oh! valencia i thought that was intentionally included as a mistake a typical not-paying-attention customer service rep might make.