A Game of Distraction
BRISTOL, R.I. __ He’s sprinting through a field, unnerved. As chaos surrounds him, he is calm. The look on his face is unchanging and determined; he knows that there are nine people trying to stop him lined up exactly where he is headed. But he forgot about the one behind right up until the moment a sword is thrust through his back. A crimson flash and a violent jerk in all it’s animated glory lights up the screen.
“I never get through that part,” said Michael Roberts, a senior at Roger Williams University. “They always get me.”
Michael, 22, walks to the television and hits the switch and the room goes quiet. He is sitting on the couch in his apartment, somewhat annoyed to be taken away from his distraction. Michael is around six feet tall and has a slightly thin build. His face is round with a five o'clock shadow and slightly tanned. Michael, like many other students, has amassed tens of thousands of dollars of student loans after four years of college and is about to enter the workforce with this debt.
“I never really understood what student loans were until recently,” said Michael. “I would just go to the bursar’s office twice a year, sign a check, and then go back to what I was doing.”
And Michael is not alone. The issue of student debt has become a national problem. According to The Chronicle of Education 12 million students take out student loans every year. The Federal Reserve Board of New York claims that there are 37 million people with outstanding student loans today. When a student who takes out loans exits college they are already saddled with debt without even a day in the workforce. And this debt does not go away easily. It is estimated that 60 percent of student loan borrowers are still in debt in their thirties.
Michael tries not to think about this. The concept of debt is so foreign to him. It is an abstract concept, not truly real.
“I have seen instances where students treat loans like monopoly money,” said Don Troop, Financial Education Reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education. “They don’t worry about it when they’re in school and they keep letting the loan amount creep up, and now student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion.”
This type of thinking by students is what fuels the national debt issue. It leads to graduates with no work experience being thrusted into a world already saddled with debt.
“Michael told me that he didn’t even think about loans until I started complaining about my own a few years ago,” said Michael’s sister, Emily Roberts. “He probably has more warning than I did.”
The problem is invisible, but it is everywhere on a college campus. The blond freshman playing frisbee on the quad between classes is in debt. The fat junior walking through the rain, shrugging his shoulders is in debt. The sophomore playing guitar in his closet sized dorm room is in debt. But none of them are thinking about it while they are distracted.
“Student loans don’t really affect the way I live day-to-day,” said Michael. “ I wouldn’t make any financial decisions based on student loans. If I go to the grocery store I won’t specifically buy cheaper things to save money on student loans because it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.”
For Michael and many students alike, student loans are nothing more than a glimmer of a thought in the back of their minds. Michael knows he should be thinking about them and planning for them, but he has other things to do.
In five weeks when a new graduate class enters the postgraduate world they bring with them their debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York the graduates bring with them an average of $24,000 of debt that starts collecting interest immediately in most cases.
“I’m probably not as worried as I should be right now,” said Michael, as he turned his video game back on. “But I think it will just be like paying an electric, water, or cable bill. It’s just something you have to do.”
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