The Price of Following Your Dreams
By Jeehan Mannan
Edited By: Shea Campion
The dreaded back-to-school time is upon us, but some of us yearn to go back to our desks without a problematic system against us.
Dreaming Big
As we all often do as children, I wanted to live a very big life and experience every profession under the sun. Astronaut, firefighter, teacher, and yes . . . even a gas station cashier. No dream was safe from me, as I yearned to be the biggest I could possibly be. And just like Mount Everest, my dreams were steep. Some would say entirely too steep. With my melting pot of dreams aside, I found myself in a limbo after college. Between paying off my student loans, desiring to go back to school with no means to pay for it, and working a full-time job that doesn’t align with my education or passion, I am struggling to even come close to achieving my dreams. The American school system is not made for people who dream big, like me.
I started out practicing belts from Wicked and Funny Girl and idolizing every actress who has graced the Broadway stage with their presence. I knew that dream might be too difficult to achieve, but not impossible like a lot of people in my life so ungraciously implied. When I shared my love of performing, they would answer with, “So, are you sure . . ?” and trail off with doubt dripping from their words. I’ve heard this statement so many times in my life that it's to the point where I just expect it. With their doubt, it felt like the odds were stacked against me. I decided to hang up that dream, and hone in that focus only while belting in the car with the radio blasting, or in the confines of my bedroom with the door sealed shut.
Then I chose to focus on being a heart surgeon after binge-watching my favorite doctor TV show. I ran with that idea for the rest of middle and high school. I really saw myself becoming a surgeon. The idea of helping others fueled my passion for many years, but as soon as I got to college and COVID-19 happened, my passion dwindled significantly. I realized how expensive college was, and my drive to study was not nearly as strong as it had been. Biology is also so hard, and the lab was nearly four hours long. I was certainly not doing that for all four years of college.
Shortly before my freshman year of college ended, I reunited with my old lover: writing. She has never steered me wrong and was always so gentle and forgiving with me. I had been learning from the best writers since the sixth grade and never understood that writing was so easy for me because I genuinely loved it. It always seemed like a natural and low-stress skill, especially when I had a lot on my mind. After reuniting with writing, I made the tough decision to switch my major to journalism and minor in creative writing. Everything made so much sense after that, and I had a blast in college and realized my heart was in editing and writing.
I could easily imagine myself being a journalist or editor based in New York City, writing my column on my laptop in a hole-in-the-wall cafe, starving for more art. However, I am thousands of dollars in debt, and the job market is lacking in my field. I make only a little above minimum wage and work a job that stresses me out more than it pays me, so I feel stuck. I am painfully aware that getting to New York is so far in my future I can’t even see it beyond the fog of my mistakes.
Great, just add that to another list of my seemingly unachievable and failed dreams.
Broken Spirit
The process of getting to college is a real doozy—SATs, scholarships, college tours, everything is so much work for a 17-year-old with no true guidance. I had many people telling me to go to community college, stay home with my parents, or go to trade school. None of it really made sense to me, and they would also decline to explain why. Having all of these people around me talk at me and not to me really made that time difficult. I wanted to go to the college my best friend went to. I applied and got accepted, but had to decline due to them neglecting to offer me any significant amount of money in scholarships. I chose to go to a university (which was my first mistake) that was close enough to home but far enough for me to feel free. I loved my university dearly, but tuition was expensive.
Money is what I lacked; I was not approved for any financial aid, like the Pell Grant, in my first three years of college. Their reasoning was that my father made about $2,000 above the annual income limit, which had absolutely nothing to do with my own personal financial status and everything to do with his. My dad assumed I would have gotten a full ride or found a way to drown myself in scholarships, and that just did not happen. I did receive quite a few scholarships, but never enough to cover the entire cost of tuition. I fear that all of my chances for scholarships went to the girl who took $1 million for herself in my high school graduating class.
I blame her for everything, honestly.
Despite focusing on my passion for literature and creative writing in high school, I was headstrong on the facade I had built up as a result of my self-doubt. People want to do the thing that makes them the most money. Maybe being a surgeon would’ve made me thousands of dollars annually, but it was not something I could truly see myself doing, nor would my heart have been in the right place. Doctors who value money over morality will always be a problem. I also realized that, past a certain point in life, dreams mean less while making money means more, and it breaks my spirit. This is why I often shifted my perspective on different careers, especially ones in medicine.
I couldn’t afford college, but I was told that it was essential in furthering any career. I felt pressured to apply and even more pressured to take out private and federal loans. I honestly felt there was no way out, and even if I chose not to pursue higher education, what else could I have done, somehow make it big on TikTok?
Despite having spent thousands of dollars on an education, it still does not seem to be enough to secure a job in the 6-month time frame my student loans hold me to after graduating. I desire to go back to school, get my master’s degree to set myself apart from other candidates, but this is even after I was told a bachelor's degree would have been enough. I am stuck between yearning to go back to school to learn more about my field and simply not making enough to cover the cost of tuition. After my experience with borrowing, I just vowed to never take out a private loan again.
I learned that the government finally decides to use your own personal financial background the year you turn 24, and no longer asks for your parents’ permission to pay for something they have nothing to do with. So I took a gap year from school and focused on working my part-time job, but it felt pointless because I never made enough to pay anything off, and I wanted to just be at school the entire time. After my break, I applied for aid and received the Pell Grant with the maximum amount of money they offered, which still only covered a small fraction of my tuition. I do believe I saved money by taking a break, as I didn’t take out another private loan my senior year of college.
My main strife with the American school system is the lack of preparedness for actual adult issues. I am sure that many schools in America offer financial literacy classes prior to graduating high school, but my school didn’t touch on the predatory behaviors behind lending companies of any kind.
Here’s What They Don’t Tell You
When I was advised to take out a loan, I quickly realized that requesting one was me begging a multimillion-dollar company for money to cover the cost of tuition that my nonexistent aid or low-value scholarships couldn’t. You can ask for a loan to buy other things, like a car or a house, but for college, it is a bit different. Student loan companies are known to be more predatory, meaning they hide important clauses between the lines of the fine print that end up blindsiding you right after you graduate. This is mostly dependent on the life of your loan, as larger loans take a longer time to pay off and tend to gather more interest monthly.
One direct reason behind loan companies being predatory is their interest system. Here's the 411 on why interest ruins everything: interest rates are the rate your loan gathers interest (duh!), which means extra money added onto the total cost of your loan for absolutely no reason, honestly. Loan companies use this as a punishment for being broke and not paying off the loan immediately. Variable rates are a nightmare. Unlike fixed rates which stay the same percentage, variable rates change monthly depending on the “market”—why would the market even care about your loan? For example, Sallie Mae advertises fixed rates between 2.39%-17.49% and variable rates between 3.75%-16.95%. Variable rates are advertised to be a smaller range of interest, which makes them more appealing, but one day your rate could be 5%, and the next it’ll jump to 10%, which is not feasible for certain incomes. What they don't tell you is that interest rates are dependent on your credit, and even with good credit, 2.39% is nearly impossible to be awarded. At 17-years-old, you don’t have good credit because it's nonexistent, as you tend not to have the opportunity to build credit on your own until the age of 18. Some loan companies offer co-signers, but that is not always a good idea and not a practical option for someone who does not have someone to co-sign for them.
Maybe 10 years after you graduate, you would have paid the principal borrowing amount, but owe more in interest because guess what . . . interest accrues while you are in school, the entire . . . time. And even while you pay for it after graduating. SoFi, another popular lending company, advertises not paying your loan until you graduate. Most lending companies state you can go on in school deferment, which is when you don’t make any payments while you are enrolled in school and are actively taking classes. However, you can also make small payments to cover interest while you are in school, which I wish I had done.
Federal loans are also not forgiving and somehow not unforgiving either, in a sense, because the government can determine anything about your loans. They can force you to change your chosen and predetermined payment plan, or somehow also decide to erase the loan completely based on legislation.
I was painfully unaware during the whole loan choice process and just excited that the cost of school was covered, but I knew that I would eventually have to pay the loan off. Despite it all, I was confident my degree would make me happy. It does, but when I hold my degree in my hand, I realized I honestly could’ve made it on Canva myself, as it looks cheap and not worth thousands of dollars. Just like when someone says, “you look easy to draw,” that's how I feel about my expensive degree.
Following Dreams
Being prepared for college is important. Maybe my luck was down because of my lack of understanding of the real world outside of what I was taught, which was only the surface level of what to expect. Yet somehow, I can’t help but blame myself for my shortcomings, despite it feeling like someone else's fault for failing me entirely.
People will say nothing is impossible, even when everything feels impossible. Especially with the thousands of dollars I’ve racked up in student loan debt. Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes; it's okay to start off small!
Starting small is not bad by any means; community college gives you a lovely foundation for more flexibility and also better financial freedom. Community colleges offer transfer programs where you can get your prerequisite courses done and then transfer to a 4-year college to finish your bachelor’s, which saves you a lot of money in the long run. It is perfectly okay to wait to decide on what you want to study, there is absolutely no need to rush — especially when you’re saving thousands,
Find more information on how to be more prepared for college debt if you haven’t received enough aid to cover tuition here: https://studentaid.gov/articles/financial-aid-not-enough/