Even with funding, graduate school is hard to manage without student loans. (Really, could you live on $14K a year?) So we all juggle our money and cross our fingers and hope that someday, we’ll have a job, and we can pay off the debt just normal grown-ups pay their mortgages. Jan Yoder probably hoped so; these days, his mother is speaking for him:
It was [loan collectors’] calls and the burden of crushing debt, she says, that led her depressed son to take the drastic action of killing himself late last month. He did so in the Illinois State University chemistry building in Normal — in the very lab where he did his research to earn his master’s degree.
He couldn’t find work, he moved back in with his mom, he sent out resume after resume. He was afraid to take a gig outside his profession because, with his unserviced debt and credit, his wages might be garnished and then professional employers might see that on his record. At the end of the story, there’s a (barely believable) kicker: two potential employers tried to contact him about job openings — but he’d already committed suicide.
Having been freelancing (cough: unemployed) for close to two years and lofting resume after resume in seeming futility (until I got lucky and landed a fulltime gig that began earlier this month), I can relate to his feelings of worthlessness. That is just heartbreaking. I was about to wonder openly why the poor guy didn’t consider bankruptcy but then I found the mention of how student loans are not dischargeable.