Daniel’s $29k Debt

Secretly, I’m glad

School: New York University
Work: Newspaper reporter

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

Admittedly, my circumstances are better than most. I am less indebted than the average borrower from my graduating class. I don’t worry about not making rent or going hungry. I buy a new pair of sneakers every once in a while. My biggest cause for thanks should probably be that I have a job I love, the first step down a career path I believe in, one that’s providing for 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 the free granola bars at work instead of the takeout restaurants downstairs. When it’s 3 am and I’m waiting for the A train instead of dozing off in the back of a cab.

But here’s the thing: it hasn’t broken me.

George Saunders said, “You don’t have to freeze to death, you just have to go outside when it’s twenty, and say hmm.” It 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 else — a sense of validation perhaps, a proof of existence, one raw uncensored outlook that seems to say: Why yes, you are a young person of your time.

Say what you will about student debt but 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 45-minute bike ride that spans two boroughs and a 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.