I’m coming off the best summer I’ve had since the one before college. Finally my life has direction again. I feel like the rich kid who joins the army in defiance of the father turning his back on the family shipping business or whatever. Now that everyone is saying don’t go to lawschool it is the sexy rebel’s choice again.

I have borrowed so much money it’s criminal.  My bank account looks better than it ever has. I routinely spend more at coffee shops in a day than I used to spend on food in a week.

I love how I am treated.  Here’s a tip kids: nobody cares what you’ve done it’s all about what people think you are going to do. I’d rather be a high schooler with No. 1 potential in basketball or football than be a lameduck President. Conventional wisdom is still that my classmates and I are collectively doomed, but me personally? I could be making $200k in NY in three years and everyone from baristas to bartenders seem to know it.

But there’s also more. I studied that chart Alpha Man posted. It’s all over the net. I’ve read comments here and on other sites and suddenly I realized what Triforce was referring to – the scam he pulled that he won’t write about. Touché Triforce, I know you pretty well and I wouldn’t have thought even your miniature effiminate poodle-looking dog would have stooped that low. You looking for a job Triforce? In five years you could be working for me.

This is it in a nutshell.  I’ll see if I can get the gang to weigh in…

So my cousin Bobby was making his college decision last year around this time. He committed to Maryland (where he’s from) but then got into Johns Hopkins off the waitlist. At the time I encouraged him to go to Hopkins because Maryland kids are thuggish and Bobby was still known as “Young Breezy aka Bitches n’ Tits also known as TYD.” TYD stood for “Throat Yogurt Dispenser.” However Aunt Jenine wasn’t rich so Bobby had to take out a fair number of loans.

So I spend a weekend with him this summer and instead of listening to my helpful hints about orgo this silly ass can’t stop talking about how healthcare reform is going to adversely effect his earning potential. Seriously?

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As I was cutting the crusts off the cucumber and cottage cheese sandwiches I was making for my mother’s book club and looking at the automated job rejections appear on my hotmail account (after all who reads job apps on the weekend) suddenly it hit me – the idea that was going to get me the best kind of employment, self-employment.

45 minutes later as I was refilling Mrs. Beraducci’s tea I ran the idea by her. See, she’s always complaining about her no-good sons who never come by, call or visit (as if a medical residency, semester abroad or deployment to Iraq was any excuse) and is always visibly jealous of my mom whenever I replace a light bulb, clean out the garage or drive to Whole Foods with her canvas bags so she can get the 5 cents per bag discount. She loved the idea. They say every chronicly unemployed person eventually tries to start their own business. With that in mind may I present Young Men for domestic Companionship and Ambience or YMCA.

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Y’all must think you’re pretty slick. Seriously, pulling something out of Reagan’s playbook: paying faux homage to King (in Reagan’s case in the form of a national holiday) while doing everything you can “behind the scenes” to promote the disparagement harassment and discrimination against African-Americans. Oh, do I have some words for you! But first let me say this to all you minority inmates in debtors prison (which like real prison is made up of a disproportionate number of us) first we’ve got to look up from staring at our own problems long enough to notice things like this and second  we may not have gotten jobs or meaningful contacts out of our fancy degrees but at least we pissed off uneducated white trash like Beck and Palin. Sure they are millionaires and we owe six figures but their jealousy and envy can at least get you through the day.

Ok now for Beck and Palin. Look, Reagan got away with what he did because 1) he was President 2) he was a charismatic actor and 3) that was 30 years ago before the Daily Show.  Glen Beck is so stupid he thought Al Sharpton marched with Dr. King…I mean can he even count to 47? Sarah Palin is on record mocking the very IDEA of being a community organizer… What do you think Dr. King WAS?! The unofficial Prince of Negroes? And these aren’t things those idiots did or said ten years ago, this is all since 2008.

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A question was posed in the New York Times recently

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?pagewanted=10&hpw

asking whether the collective failure of “twenty somethings” to 1) finish school 2) move out 3) become financially stable 4) marry and 5) have a child by age 30 and hence achieve adulthood is so rampant that perhaps we are witnessing some kind of collective devolution such that a new category in addition to adolescence is needed between childhood and adulthood called “emerging adulthood.”  This article is more than just another slap in the face to young people who have never had the opportunity to start a career mixed with some struggling, debt-ridden academic’s sad attempt to make a name for himself.  This article is the very antithesis of what this blog is all about and as such merits a response.  As I peel back the layers of lies and hypocrisy I ask that you the reader not lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day life is not about 1-5. 1-5 simply has to do with a society perpetuating its own existence.  Your LIFE is measured by how you advance an organized movement designed to benefit others well beyond your few years on the planet.
 
First, let me say this: ouch.  I don’t say ouch lightly.  This was not a bee sting or a splinter.  This was a sledgehammer to the ankles.  This is like getting a test back from a teacher that you failed so badly the teacher actually begins to wonder if whether you have some unknown mental deficiency.  I mean, the article is saying someone in my situation is so hopelessly pathetic that SOCIETY NEEDS TO MAKE SPECIAL LAWS TO ACCOMMODATE MY EXISTENCE.  I have a friend who completed 1-5 by age 23.  I was 0-5 then.  Now I’m 28, 1-5, with nothing on the horizon.  This article suggests that when we rent cars, purchase alcohol or engage in other activities that the law treat us differently…kind of like insurance companies do when evaluating what kind of risk you are or mortgage companies do when deciding whether or not to give you a loan.  According to this article pursuing a graduate degree and not being able to get a job right away could eventually make you a protected class under the Constitution!

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Several months ago Erin (I think) wrote an article called why I don’t care about the national debt. Maybe someone else stole the by line but I remember the conversation that spurned the entry. About a week and a half ago the President reminded us how in a generation we had plummetted from 1 to 12 in terms of countries with the highest percentage of citizens with a college degree. And of course this is Debtors’ Prison so you know how we get down. Let’s explore how the three are interconnected.

Student Debt and National Debt. It’s really hard to care about the latter when entrenched in the former, particularly when the latter is used as an excuse for why the govt can’t help you but they need another fleet of 100 million aircraft to hunt the 50 Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan. But let’s look deeper. We as students behaved alot like our country, borrowing a ton for a questionable large investment and assuming everything would just work out because hey, it’s us.

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In my last post I mentioned that most people at my company don’t have student debt.  I sat on this for awhile, wanting to come to my own conclusions without comments from Benito and the Peanut Gallery. I think I finally figured it out. Nobody wants to be a “Management Analyst” or a “Program Manager” when they grow up.

My first instinct was greed. I still think that’s a big part of it. People associate wealth with the Ivy League and top schools and doctored statistics or not the hazy promise of wealth does it for most people.

But let’s look at the heaviest student debtors – doctors and lawyers, well that’s almost too easy. Follow that with the hazier “captain of industry” or boss and you have another group due to that pesky MBA.

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It’s that time of year again. I think it starts with the back to school commercials for Staples and Target. School reminds those of us on skid row and in Debtors Prison that time really is passing and not in a good way. For the chronically unemployed August is when you start looking for and filling out applications for jobs to be sent the Tuesday after Labor Day. This will be my third Tuesday after Labor Day of Unemployment. The first one I sent out 100 applications sure I would get my pick of jobs. Last year I sent out 300 sure I would get a job. This year I will send out 500 sure licking envelopes on materials that still need to be mailed will dry out my throat. Debtors Prison is like San Diego: weather is always the same. Unemployment has seasons and I would say the beginning of the “unemployed year” is August 1st.

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I know, I know.  The saying goes “Missing the Forest for the Trees…” or something like that.  But that’s not going on here.  Alot of you people are missing the Forest for the damn stumps.  Case in point, recently a kid demanded that his law school admit to swindling him so he could discharge his loans in bankruptcy.  And yes this story was on ATL.  Why do we quote ATL so much when this blog is supposed to be out all student debtors? Because ATL is about law and has a major black contributor.  Out of the 6.5 bloggers we’ve got two lawyers, a paralegal, a law student and two African-Americans.  This ain’t rocket science.  Link below.

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/07/student-v-school-charlotte-school-of-law-sued-by-student-seeking-admissions-for-bankruptcy-proceeding/

But what I’ve got to say goes back to just that, we’re for ALL STUDENT DEBTORS not just law students and stories like this distract from the message I hope we’re helping to convey which is that we are witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift in what used to be unassailable advice for young people, particularly women and minorities, which was EDUCATE. 

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