Student loans and college

I've been under a bit of stress lately. I've been on a leave of absence from college (I am a non-traditional student) and while I haven't been in school my loans have started to come due. While I do work, those loans are quite the burden to have in addition to all my other bills.

It's my fault, of course. Back when I first got to college after high school I didn't pay attention in class. I played video games all day. I slept through early classes. I didn't do homework. I was, in no uncertain terms, a bit of a fuck-up.

I dropped out. I worked retail for a while. This wasn't as awful as it might have been, and it did force me to face several problems I had socializing with others. It was still pretty bad though, and it never paid well.

Then I got into working tech support. I started my tech support career by working at a small boarding school in my hometown. This job paid well, and I was OK for a while. Then I got laid off.

The school just couldn't afford to keep me on as full-time technical support, particularly because they were already paying my boss to do it too. They wanted someone who could work as technical support and teach kids at the same time. Since I didn't have a college degree, I couldn't take on the additional responsibility and they had to hire someone else.

I was resolved not to have this sort of thing happen again. To fix it I had to go back to college. My parents (god bless them) hadn't left me saddled with previous student loan debt, and so I was able to get a student loan to go back to college full time. 

I started at my current job about the same time. At the time I was per-diem. I was the guy who got called if someone called in sick or went out on vacation. I worked the Saturday morning shift no one else wanted.

Eventually I was able to start working full time. I picked up 4 weekday shifts to add in to my Saturday shift. This was great for covering my day-to-day bills, but not so great for going to school full time. I kept going, but with a full-time job AND full-time school I was forced to drop my classes down to 3 a semester.

This turned out to be something of a mistake. The college thought that I was not completing my degree fast enough, and it removed my eligibility for federal financial aid. Unable to afford to go back to school, I took a leave of absence and worked on an appeal.

Then the bills started showing up. I took a year's worth of private loans to stay on my feet in the year that I wasn't working full time. This loan on it's own is around $9,000. In addition I have about $20,000 of federally-backed student loans. 

I feel like they hang over me like the sword of Damocles. If I am not able to get back into college for the Fall semester, my bill will be considerable, well beyond my current ability to pay. If  do go back, I have to take on additional debt to do so.

College in general is looking like less and less of a deal. I have friends who have degrees who cannot find jobs in the fields that they have degrees for. I could change to a less expensive school (I currently am a student at a state run college in NH), but online colleges and private colleges aren't that much less expensive, and their degrees seem to get significantly less attention from prospective employers.

I am hardly the only person with the loan issue either. I know many people who have accrued thousands of dollars in financial aid with the promise of a better job though education. Some of them found those jobs, but have discovered that they don't quite pay enough to make the monthly payment. Some haven't found the job at all, and are making ends meet by doing other work. Some haven't managed to finish college, but find themselves buried in debt all the same.

The ballooning cost of higher education is a problem. It is very nearly impossible to work full time and pay your way through college now. I have a good job, that pays an otherwise-livable hourly wage. Even with my skills however setting aside the money for a full semester of classes is an impossibility. I could take classes at a rate of one per semester, but it would take me years to obtain the education I would otherwise be able to get through in two semesters, and at the rate of over $1000 per class (not including books and other required supplies) it would still require a significant amount of budgeting to even afford that.

I'm not really looking for anyone to blame here, just expressing a little frustration. Since I'm already into this degree for as much as I am it seems like stopping now would be the worst thing I could possibly do. I'll keep going, but sooner or later the bills will come due, and I'm not really sure I'm going to be prepared to meet them.