Diary of a Middle-Class College Grad
So, I've decided to start what I hope to be a series about being a middle-class college grad. At lease my version of what it's like. For one, I know I'm not the only one. In fact, that will be one of my main focuses...there's an ass-load of us. Secondly and as I've said before on here, it's free therapy. Now that's two Middle Class College Grad points. Things needing to be free to accessed by us, since we neither qualify for public aid, nor do we have any actual money, let alone disposable income. And therapy. That one requires no explanation.
I will do this in sections. It's been nine years since I've graduated undergrad. It would be too long and and not as much fun to do this all in one shot.
Chapter ONE
I suppose some background is required.
I come from a middle-class family. My mother had me as a teenager and so we were not always middle-class. When I was very young we were in need of public aid, but that was very brief. My mom worked her ass off waiting tables and going to college. She continued on to educate herself beyond a master's degree and by the time I was ten or eleven we were middle-class. I needed for nothing. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends of my mother took very good care of me and offered her emotional and babysitting support. I'm sure the occasional loan was extended in emergency situations, but from what I've been able to gather, was always repaid as promised. I was a good kid. Well behaved and eager to please. As A child I was into martial arts, sports, singing, and dreaming about being a superstar. I had one hell of an imagination. I think that's not uncommon for only children of single parents. They're busy making sure we eat and have heat in the winter time. We've got to entertain ourselves some how. In addition to the sports, singing The Sound of Music soundtrack to myself, and daydreaming, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather at An east coast, sort of impressive, university's basketball and football games. This university bares significance because my grandfather attended and played football there. My grandmother worked there. And several of my aunts and uncles got their undergraduate degrees, grad degrees, and law degrees there. Add that to my daydream list. Attending preppy east coast legacy school one day.
My mother was single until she remarried when I was somewhere around eleven. She married a man she met while waiting tables; a coworker. They had a son when I was 15, he had an affair when I was 18 and they divorced before I was 19. It was a super-swell time for all.
I was an average to below average high school student. My grades sucked. I was a decent athlete. I had a good group of friends and a very sweet and handsome boyfriend. I filled out two college applications (Preppy east coast legacy school was not one of them. I figured I had zero chance of getting in at this point). Both because they were pretty thin and had a small or no application fees. I never discussed college or my future with my mother. In fact when I got my acceptance letters I chose my school based on the fact that my uncle had once given me a sweatshirt from there. I liked the colors and it was on the other side of the state. So it was going away to college...but I could drive home in 5-6 hours if need be.
It will be right here that I mention the I went to college in 1996. Long before the Predatory Lending Act. This will come into play later. But for those of you who don't know or don't remember, this meant that it was perfectly legal to offer college students free t-shirts in exchange for filling out credit card applications. Then these college students were approved and sent credit cards. Whether or not they had a job/income and whether or not they understood the terms and conditions. I was not one of those college students who had parents who served as cash cows. I took out loans for tuition, room and board, and my mother deposited $20.00 a week into my checking account. I didn't have a car. I didn't have a cell phone (until 2002). I went to college in a rural town. My options were to work at Subway, McDonalds, or one of the 10 small business in town. In a tiny college town you basically have to be grandfathered into one of those jobs. The other option was to leave town to work. No car. Rural area. No leaving town. But as I said. None of this mattered. Credit cards all around!
I graduated college in 2000...with a degree in the arts. Super. I got a job working for the country's leading vitamin a supplement retailer and played the part of townie for a few months. I finally, minimally wised-up and moved back home to the other side of the state. Back to my middle-class home...which at that point had become upper-middle class. I lived there for a couple of months, having had transferred within my company to a location near my mother's house. I borrowed my grandmother's car to get to and from work and took a second job clerking at my aunt's law firm. I wisely [insert sarcastic tone] got a dog upon graduating and found that he and my mother's dog did not get along. I accepted an invitation to move into my aunt and uncle's home with their two young daughters and was now living in an upper-class home in an upper to upper-upper-class neighborhood. Shortly there after my aunt and uncle came to know about my huge credit card debt and balance owed to my undergraduate university (i still don't fully understand how that happened) which kept me from receiving my transcripts or diploma. Very generously my aunt and uncle loaned me the money to pay off my debt. They also co-signed on getting me a cell phone. This was well above and beyond the duties of a family member and I will be forever grateful. That summer I left the vitamin and clerking businesses and I took a job teaching theatre at a summer camp (post-graduation job #3). I had also decided that I was going to apply to graduate school at Preppy east coast legacy school for my master's degree in theatre. The real world had me in a complete panic. I lived comfortably in a cushy suburb, had my nice summer job teaching rich people's kid's theatre games, and was crossing my fingers that my 2.34 gpa and mediocre GRE scores would be over-looked because of my family's relationship with the university. They were. I received an acceptance letter from the university with post-it notes on it from staff members I had known growing up, welcoming me and telling me they couldn't wait to see me. So, I was teaching theatre and was finally going to my family's legacy school. I has also picked up a part-time job nannying for the sweetest family in the tri-state area, three mornings a week. Three year old boy, two-year old girl, and 4 month old boy. I sang him to sleep for his mid-morning nap every day that I was with him. Desperado (the Linda Ronstadt version, not Don Henley, of course) was his favorite. I loved all three of them very much. Things were looking good...
Time Out of College: 1 year, 2 months
Student Loan Debt: $25,000.00
Family Debt: $6,000.00
Other Debt: $0.00
Failed Long-Term Relationships: 3
Post-Grad Jobs to Date: 4
Conversations With My Father Since The Age Of Eleven: 2
