OCCUPY STUDENT DEBT

It’s not really about the money for me, I don’t have any money. It’s more about the education I sought and did not get. My first day of college was 9/11, after which the atmosphere of the small New York liberal arts college that sold me the Sallie Mae loan suddenly degenerated to something other than educational. A political disagreement with a professor led him to deny me credit, which led the college to reduce my scholarship, which led to the early demise of my academic life. Ten years of marginal living and a few sporadic payments later, I hold a threatening default collection letter from NYSHESC, and I still have difficulty believing that I owe them anything, since the education I was paying for was not made available to me after my freshman year. Add to this the frustration of going through endless deferment processes at the advice of Sallie’s outsourced Indonesian phone operators, only to have my many applications lost, ignored, and denied. Add to this the endless midnight robo-calls, and that I already suffer from lifelong bouts with insomnia. Add to this that I have not given up, and have attended school several times since, always being required to take out more loans, and each time receiving little or nothing of value from these paradoxical government-accredited/corporate-money-ruled educational institutions. This is the making of an occupier. I attend full-time at the school of life now, working in my local community, volunteering and working on organic farms, learning life-skills from people who never went to college. My life is good, I’m not complaining. I just don’t see any validity in a contract I signed at the age of 18, before I had any way of knowing what would then happen to my country, or how far I would have to wander beyond the university system before I found my real education. I wonder how much they’ve profited from SLABS-trading of my loan over the last ten years? I wonder if NYSHESC will try to repossess my shovel and work gloves? Perhaps I can pay them in beets?