Daniel’s $29k Debt

Secretly, I’m glad

Student loans: $29,000
Job: Newspaper writer

Call it a naive endorsement of hardship. Or some dormant martyr complex. Maybe, in the end, it’s just a streak of masochism. Whatever the reason, when I say to someone, “Yes, I have student loans,” I do so with a tinge of pride.

Admittedly, I have less in loans than most; less, in fact, than the average in my graduating class. I earn enough to put food in the fridge, a roof over my head, enough for a drink on the weekends, a new pair of sneakers every once in a while. More than that, I’m blessed to be doing work I love, the first step down a career path I believe in, a job that allows me to chip away at my debt with the expectation of one day wiping away every last crumb.

Still, the weight of student debt is a burden I shoulder every day. I feel it when I wake up in the morning — Bed-Stuy instead of the Lower East Side. When lunch is often the free granola bars at work instead of the takeout restaurants downstairs. When it’s 3 a.m. and I’m waiting for the A train instead of dozing off in the back of a cab.

George Saunders said, “You don’t have to freeze to death, you just have to go outside when it’s twenty, and say, hmm.” His is a call to empathy, and, in a way, my student loans have helped me answer it.

When I look at the sum of it all — a staggering $1.1 trillion — I always marvel in the knowledge that I hold a stake in the number, that some tiny portion of it is actually mine. It’s not the kind of thought that inspires warmth and fuzziness, but it stirs up something — a sense of validation, perhaps, or a proof of existence, a full-throated affirmation: Why yes, you are a young person of your time.

Say what you will about student debt — it is a plight my generation can claim as its own. And, in facing this common struggle, I find a sense of connection with my countless, faceless peers across the country. There is value in adversity and I think we’re starting to find that, together. As products of the same system, we are now all just simply doing the best we can.

My commute to work — a 55-minute bike ride that spans two boroughs and the Williamsburg bridge — started as a way to save money on a metro card. The trips are now something I look forward to. $29K is heavy but our shoulders are strong. I wouldn’t have it any other way.