Last summer, while listening to a panel about the "future of graduate studies in English literature," I heard the chairwoman of an English department at a prestigious university discussing what she termed a little-known fact about graduate students: We are swimming in credit-card debt.
She was, quite rightly, trying to shed light on the unintended costs of increased time to degree for doctoral students and of so many young Ph.D.'s serving in a series of low-paid, postdoctoral positions. "They're so foolish about debt!" she concluded, as several professors around me nodded knowingly.
I was too busy blushing to notice how other graduate students in the room were reacting: After all, I am swimming in about 11,000 feet of credit-card debt. I wondered, Am I foolish about debt?
The fact that I have incurred so much of it suggests that I am. This fall, after five years in graduate school, and with three chapters from my dissertation in hand, I've begun my first search for a teaching job. In the spirit of calculating my own future in English literature, it might be time to do a little math.
I have no educational loans. I was raised in a working-class family; my mother is a secretary and my father is a construction worker. (Lately, if I worry about retirement, it's theirs, not mine.) Like my siblings, I attended a large state university through a combination of scholarships, part-time jobs, and our mother's union dues (since she worked at the same university, her benefits included immediate tuition-remission vouchers for all of her children).
After college, I spent two unfulfilling years as a secretary in New York City, and decided to apply to graduate school. I was accepted into a competitive program at a large, Midwestern state university.
Despite the insane work demands and my new oddball peers, graduate school felt like a delicious challenge. Poverty was no fun in New York. As a secretary at a nonprofit legal agency in New York, I had made about $22,000 a year. My rent was $400 a month for a share of an apartment in New Jersey; my monthly commuting costs were almost as high.
Graduate school penury in the Midwest was romantic by comparison. In my first year, the stipend for my graduate fellowship was $12,000. That September, the first $6,000 of that was deposited into my checking account. I had never seen so much money in one lump sum in my entire life.
My rent was $650 a month for a nondescript one-bedroom apartment with concrete walls. My car insurance was $800 a year. After rent and insurance, I vaguely recall spending a lot of money on a lot of fancy French cigarettes and bad wine. Those were my salad days: I felt very poor and very happy.
My second year of graduate school was a blur of teaching assignments, seminar papers, and late nights out drinking and gossiping. I was still poor, but less happy. My rent had increased to $690. I had turned 25, so my car insurance decreased a bit.
By my third year, I was frazzled by my qualifying examinations and burnt out on small-town dating. My rent was now $720. Because I had completed my coursework and was bored with the Midwest, I chose to return to New York, where I found a charming, dilapidated, rent-controlled tenement apartment with another graduate student for $840 a month (each). When my fellowships ran out, I took a job working as a legal secretary 20 hours a week, making around $1,400 a month.
Poverty was still no fun in New York. Some of my old friends were now lawyers, and graciously subsidized (some of) my nightlife. I dated other idealistic, educated poor folks: actors, filmmakers, and graduate students. I found every cheap BYOB restaurant in Manhattan.
My scholarly work benefited greatly from the amazing museums, archives, and other cultural stimuli that New York offers. After a year of paying my own way, I was awarded two competitive fellowships that provided me withh 16 months of financial support, in order to finish my degree. I'm now on a stipend of $1,600 a month, which will increase soon to $1,800 a month. My rent has also increased: I now pay $900 a month.
How, and when, did I accumulate so much debt?
I don't recall any wild spending sprees. But, like any good historicist, I decided I needed some archival research: I dug around under my bed for my old credit-card statements. I had entered graduate school in September 1999 with $1,000 of debt. I spent $840 that month: $350 went to a rental car company (for the moving truck?) and $490 to various bookstores. Books, it seems to me, are a professional necessity.
In the next three months, I spent $180 on a plane ticket (for the holidays) and $75 at local bookstores. In January, my charges were $780. Of that amount, $600 went for books (most likely for my courses) and $180 for new glasses. Looking back, I'm floored by my frugality.
In April, 2000, I charged groceries for the first time. I did so five times the following summer. Those charges reflect my first, truly foolish credit-card mistake. Because of an administrative error, my stipend that summer was deposited two weeks late. I had run out of money and was short on rent for the first time in my life, so I took out a cash advance of $120.
May's bill reflected all of that, including the 19-percent interest I was charged on the cash advance, rather than the usual 9 percent. In a fit of panic, I paid three months of rent and used the rest of my stipend to pay off the credit debt in full -- leaving me virtually penniless.
I also charged household items, tanks of gas, a birthday dinner, a subscription to The New York Times, and car insurance that summer. By the end of my first year in graduate school, I was $2,000 in debt.
The next year followed a similar pattern: I incurred about another $1,000 to $1,500 in debt. My spending patterns remained the same: I spent about $800 on books. I took a road trip with my friends to New Orleans that cost around $400. I ate a few dinners out, usually averaging about $50 a month.
By September of 2001, I was $3,532.23 in debt. By September 2002, I was $4,841.19 in debt.
Last month's statement showed a disastrous figure of about $11,000. New York is more expensive than my small college town. My credit-card statements also reflect a change in my spending patterns, documenting what I can only describe as frugality fatigue: Months of sane spending followed by a short-term spree on absolutely insane purchases.
Such sample charges include a $300 charge to Bloomingdale's for a designer handbag; $24 at Dean & Deluca for green tea; $40 at my local liquor store; $80 at a local yarn shop; and $120 for British sneakers.
For most people, such "sprees" would reflect the normal cost of life. But most people make more than I do. For me, they're the toll of more than five years of yo-yoing between large fellowship stipends and empty checking accounts, of being able to plan for only six months at a time, and of a growing sense that this is the only time in my career when I can control where I'll live.
In August of 2003, I spent $280 on X-rays and $400 on laptop repairs. I was in between fellowships and had no health insurance. I had slid down the steps of my charming two-floor walkup, resulting in an injury to my arm and, more painfully, damage to computer files containing my dissertation-research notes.
Those charges reflect a moment I have tried hard to forget: sitting in my apartment, immobilized by pain, staring at a gross lump on my wrist and a computer that refused to respond. Thankfully, a friend of a friend from college worked in an orthopedic surgeon's office and was able to pull a few strings so that I could avoid the expense of an emergency room. The fall (luckily) cost me a total of only $680 but scared me enough to wonder how I could afford to remain in this career.
A popular financial counselor routinely breaks down debt into dichotomies: Education loans are "good debt" whereas credit-card debt is "bad debt." But what's mine?
Most days, most of it feels like good debt: It's the debt I've incurred in order to pursue the teaching and research opportunities that I love. On bad days, I torture myself with an angry sense that I have the world's most expensive hobby and that an academic career is out of reach to someone with my financial background.
The job market can't tell me if I'm foolish about debt. But it will test my resolve to finish my degree and determine the price I'll have to pay for it. I hope the bottom line isn't too much more than $11,000. In the meantime, I'm trying not to spend, dreaming instead of having dental insurance, a 401(k), a saving's account, and a tenure-track job I love that I can actually afford.
