Dark Clouds A Lifting

Are Student Loans Good Debt?

I realize that are many people way too deep with their student loan debt taken out for other professional degrees, master degrees, undergraduate degrees, and let’s not even talk about all the online degrees. I at least have a practical chance of repaying my student loan debt. We all though have drunk the Kool-Aid that “student loan debt is good debt” for much too long. How can a debt that can never be written off when you are otherwise bankrupt be good debt?

My own personal story with debt I think reflects my naïveté but I suspect I am not alone. It should be understood that I have never liked being in a position to owe anybody anything. I have never wanted to be held hostage by somebody else’s whims, real or imagined on my part. This fiercely independent spirit has not served me best, I’ll admit. I am after all human and as humans we are supposed to have faith in each other and be interdependent, I know, but that’s another story. My point is, the very American concept of borrowing large amounts of money to go to school with or to live life on does not sit well with me.

Luckily for me, my undergraduate education came at minimal cost to me and my family. Even so, the few thousands that my parents were responsible for made me feel so guilty that I made it a point to work during school and during the summers to put some money towards my tuition. Of course, having African parents meant that they saw it as their duty to pay for their children’s university education. In hindsight I realize that whether I had saved or splurged my hard-earned pennies my college tuition would have been paid all the same. Medical school was another story. Graduate university school was our own responsibility.

Being an International Student at an American Medical School

As an international student in America, I had been told by the premed advisor in college that it would be damn near impossible to get into an American medical school because of the extreme competitiveness even among the American students. On top of that, unlike for undergraduate degrees, there was little in the way of scholarships and grants I was told. I was encouraged to find other interests.

I took the advice as a personal affront. I assumed the advisor saw a Black girl, an African at that, before her and concluded that I didn’t have what it took to get into medical school. What other explanation could there have been? It was early in the first semester of my first year. So, I never went back to her and I didn’t seek out any other professor in the sciences for my career-decision making qualms. I proclaimed myself pre-health and pursued both biology and anthropology studies.

My fourth year of college begun on such a high. In each class year ahead of me, one or two international students, African may I add, had managed to gain admission into an American medical school and had actually enrolled. Surely, I could too. When my turn came around, I was called for interviews almost everywhere that I had applied. It was such a rush. But the winter progressed into spring with receipt of either rejected or wait-listed statuses from these schools and I became crushed.

On the other hand, I had been accepted into excellent schools of public health but now I wanted to go into medicine that much more. I could not envision doing what I wanted to do with my life with just a public health degree. Who would take me seriously? No, I told myself that I needed the M.D. Clearly, I don’t think so anymore. In either case, when I did eventually start getting off the wait-list at various medical schools during the spring I was already so dejected that I refused the schools that offered partial scholarships to me. Can you imagine? I was stubbornly going to go where I wanted to go out of my remaining choices after having already been rejected from the one I truly desired to attend.

Taking Out Private Bank Loans for Medical School

My medical school was known to be expensive even at that time. As a foreigner I had to show proof of funds to be able to matriculate. As an international student I was not eligible for federal student loan programs. Out of the woodwork, a close friend of my father offered to co-sign my first year loan. At the end of each year, he co-signed the next year’s loan, and then the next. Each was a private bank loan. Each was at 6-8% interest. I took out loans to cover the full tuition plus living expenses. Loans that were approved in time to allow my medical school to grant me student status, so I could stay in legal F1 student non-immigrant status. Loans that started to gain interest the minute they were disbursed.

To this day, when I start to vent about how miserable my life is because I chose to be a doctor I have to remember how badly I wanted this for myself, and how much faith and investment others had put in me. I suppose to be honest though I could claim that the idea of being a physician was planted in me by others earlier in life, and that I just accepted it. There is a personal truth in claiming to be pre-health and not pre-med but I guess I wanted to prove that I could become a doctor. I was good in the sciences but my heart lay in the arts and humanities. But it is now what it is. The bed has been made.

I took out only the bare minimum to cover tuition and basic living expenses that first year. I flew to medical school with my two suitcases of life belongings and rented a room that was furnished with a twin mattress that lay directly on the floor. I shake my head now at the vision of my toiletries carefully lined up on the floor next to the mattress. Next to that a growing pile of used textbooks. One of my suitcases served as a table, the mattress my chair for when I had to study at home. I spent most of my time in the school, staying behind after class, only returning to my room to sleep. I didn’t have a car then. Didn’t even know how to drive. The apartment was not in the best of neighbourhoods so I would only stay in school as late as which ever kind class-mate who would give me a ride home did.

When it came time to apply for a loan for the second year of school, I upped my living allowances, debt be damned, moved out of that room into a one bedroom apartment in a safer neighbourhood and bought myself furniture. Third year came around with the requirement to drive to the different hospital sites for my clinical rotations. My parents purchased my car for me which is still going strong twelve years later. Back then, it took about twenty dollars to fill my tank every two weeks, and that was carefully budgeted out of school loans.

Deferring Student Loan Repayment

I completed medical school with about $190,000 owed to the bank in principal and accrued interest. In addition, I owed $12,000 to my undergraduate college, which had gained ZERO interest in the 4 years of deferral. Is it any wonder that I love Wellesley College and will forever send in to them my alumnae donations?

Not so for my medical school. Actually, after receiving one too many email requests talking about how tuition was now $51,000 per year and 40% of the Class of 2012 had debt over $200,000, excluding their undergraduate debt, and we the alumni community and the school itself were falling short in providing scholarship support blah blah blah … I shot them back a terse email detailing how I of the Class of 2004 had my own debt of over $200,000, excluding my undergraduate debt, to worry about. Humph! That should teach them to clutter my mailboxes.

I don’t think anybody was more shocked though than my benevolent co-signers when I revealed my intern year salary of just about $40,000.  I sensed that they thought I was lying because yeah-yeah interns and residents make less than full-fledged doctors but surely it had to be more than that?! I recall being told, “but I know a nurse at that hospital who makes more than $60,000”.

Internship, residency, and fellowship proved to be as tough as I was forewarned. They were horribly demanding of my time and sanity. Add on the feeling of being buried and trapped by a humongous financial burden. Of knowing how hard you worked for pennies that wouldn’t even cover the minimum monthly payment of the collective loan were you to send your entire paycheck directly to the bank. Then add  the realization that society at large thinks your profession is one of greedy incompetent liars. It was a downright miserable existence. Now add all the hoops I had to jump through to make sure I was maintaining proper legal status in the US post 9/11. I was perpetually stressed, overwhelmed, and anxious.

Student Loans Dictate My Career Path

Tackling Student Loan Repayment