Yup. I even planned out my debt at the age of 17. When I selected a college in 2005, I would have graduated with 8k in debt. Quite reasonable.
The crash my junior year and the resulting divorce of two of my parents means over half my undergrad debt was from my senior year. I had to choose between doubling my debt and dropping out with a year left.
And I also effed myself by working my way through school to try to keep costs down/take out less debt. It meant I had no money when I graduated so I couldn't even afford things like interview clothes for basic office jobs and I had to take the first thing I could get. In retrospect, working on tech projects in my spare time would have been a better FINANCIAL option than working a job for 7.25/hr, especially since this was '06-'10 and I was interested in things like NLP.
I just don't care anymore. I tried to be responsible, it didn't work, and now I just don't care.
I had a very similar path to you. I felt like I had been responsible and made it all the way through college. Then I had $75k in debt and I was going into $8/hour interviews with 40-60 other applicants.
One time I stopped at kinkos to print out some portfolio designs for an interview, and the cost was 6 dollars. I had to leave because I only had 3 dollars.
Things are much, much better now that I transitioned into tech. I kinda did it for money but I'm lucky because I do genuinely love it - I wish I had started it sooner in life.
I'm curious - where did you end up? If you're on here, I assume you're in a STEM field of some sort?
I'm actually in political communications; I leaned heavily into the rise of identity politics. (I'm a gay disabled female. Not great in early 00s tech, especially as a teenaged girl, but VERY good in certain spaces). I do tech stuff for non-techies, and it works pretty well, especially as there's more crossover between politics and tech. (I had to explain rms to a bunch of policy wonks the other day, that was weird).
I just missed talking about tech and was sick of getting blank looks when I rambled about how Page Rank is a mistake.
Oh, and regarding HN, I've been here on and off lurking since it was founded in 2005, I just thought I was too stupid to contribute. Now I'm old, jaded, and realize we're all stupid.
Yep, exactly. I graduated in 2008. The market crashed, I had a useless degree, and by then knew that a very significant portion of my money went to administrative positions at my college.
It definitely left me, and likely most other people, wondering why on earth we shot ourselves in the foot with the monetary equivalent of a mortgage at the dawn of our professional lives.
