This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shanna Hayes, who is a special education teacher in the DC metro area, owes more than $150,000 in loans, and has worked with the Student Debt Crisis Center. It has been edited for length and clarity.
As a kid in upstate New York, I never questioned whether I would go to college — my mom made it clear that higher education was a must and happily handed me the Fiske Guide to Colleges when I was a teenager. In 2011, I graduated from New England College with a Bachelor’s in secondary mathematics education and became the first person in my family to earn their college degree.
I didn’t think about my loans much as an undergraduate. Yes, I’d taken out $100,000, but I assumed that with a stable career I would be able to manage my repayments. Nobody ever explained to me how interest accrues or anticipated the endless stream of lawsuits to come.
I wasn’t prepared for the reality of my teaching salary or complicated nature of interest on student loans.
I’m 35 now and have a long, winding history with my student debt, from income-driven repayment plans, to in-school deferments, to the SAVE plan, which an appeals court just blocked. I’ve held various jobs, earned three degrees, and even survived a traumatic brain injury, but still I owe more in loans now than I took out in the first place. And with the lawsuits and delays, my $150,000 of worth of debt in private and federal loans is now in limbo.
When I landed my first teaching job out of college at a public school district in New Hampshire, I thought my $29,000 annual salary was a huge win. And why not? I was making more money than some members of my family, more than I’d ever made in my previous minimum-wage positions. But I soon realized that I could barely afford rent and basic necessities.
The easiest, fastest way to a higher salary was another degree — and with it, more debt. So I went to graduate school in 2015 and took out $35,000 more in loans. While in school, I was placed on in-school deferments and started paying off my debt again in the fall of 2016. By that point, I was earning $10,000 more per year, thanks to my new degree. Finally, things felt a little bit more stable. Not easy, but possible.
A traumatic brain injury knocked my life — and my loans — off balance.
Then, on January 10, 2016, I sustained a traumatic brain injury that left me unable to do much of anything. I had to relearn how to walk, tie my shoes, punch in my phone number. To be honest, I didn’t even remember I had loans, let alone know how to pay them off. Throughout my many months of recovery, though, my bills piled up and interest accrued. By the time I called my student loan lender in late March of 2016, my credit score had plummeted more than 400 points.
My lender told me they couldn’t help, even though I hadn’t been physically able to make my payments. I hadn’t consolidated my loans, so each semester counted as its own bill — between my years of undergraduate and graduate school, I had more than a dozen loans. It was as if I had 15 different car payments and didn’t pay a single one. Really, it looked like I hadn’t paid any of my bills for months.
Between getting on another income-driven repayment plan, going back to school for a bit, and spending hours on the phone, I eventually got on the SAVE plan. The plan took my wife’s loans into consideration, too, and it was the most affordable program I’d been on during my eternity as a borrower.
The stability didn’t last, though, in no small part to the lawsuits that never seem to end. I got off of SAVE before the 8th circuit court blocked it, when I applied to consolidate my loans at the end of May — who knows how I’d feel if I were still a SAVE borrower, stuck in no-man’s land. Now, my consolidation has been processed, but my application for a new plan hasn’t, even though I applied three months ago.
The lawsuits only make my situation more complicated and I fear my financial future hangs in the balance this election.
My payments are on pause as I wait for the processing, but interest continues to accrue. The lawsuit blocking SAVE doesn’t help — it only reminds me how unstable everything is and how long it takes to get clarity. I want to believe that consolidating my loans was the right choice, but as of now I have no guarantee. I thought I was doing something in my long-term interest, but with the delays and rollercoaster of litigation, I may end up paying more than I expected.
Even now, at 35-years-old and with three degrees, I don’t feel like I understand the state of my loans. It’s impossible to know who can answer my questions. It takes hours to get through to a loan servicer, and that’s only if I click the right button or yell into the phone long enough. If I do ever talk to someone, they rarely know the answer.
The lawsuits feel political to me, but I just don’t see why politicians are interested in hindering my ability to survive. There are so many misconceptions about who benefits from loan forgiveness — usually, it’s not doctors or lawyers making hundreds of thousands a year, but people like me.
I have no problem paying for the loans I took out, but I do have a problem with how interest compounds. My current debt is 20% interest, and that number just keeps growing. The election looms before me, with my financial future depending on who occupies the White House and how they feel about student debt.
Off the SAVE plan and stuck in between processing hold-ups, court delays, and political battles, I feel like I’m back where I’ve always been: waiting for an end to my debt, with no clear end in sight.
