The first person that came to mind when I read this question was my cousin. She is only a year older, but our lifestyles could not be more different. The economy, the price of an education, the accessibility of students loans in almost any amount, and our views on relationships have all conspired to drive a wedge between me and the one person with whom I’ve spent almost my entire life.

My cousin likes to go out, while I barely know what a weekend is. She subscribes to retail therapy, while I window shop at the grocery store. She works in benefits management, while, well … I don’t plan to retire. And she likes to bet on sports, when I feel adventurous buying a $1 scratch ticket. PS. I never win.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that online shopping is not a tandem sport, and that I am in no way obligated to make an actual wager while watching sports, but I’m embarrassed not to be able to afford a cover charge and drinks. Even without time constraints, of which there are many, I have to save up to give Celtics tickets as gifts. And I never have anything new to report, which I’m sure is boring to a girl that knows virtually everything about me.

I hate to think that money is driving us apart, but I know she tires of hearing me say I cannot afford something or I have to work, and I can hardly bear having to say it.

The second thing that comes to mind is how disappointing my life must be to those who educated and mentored me. I showed potential in college. They were great years. I was a dramaturg, director, and writer. Now I am a box-office manager, assistant house manager, and half-price ticket seller.

I am proud of myself, and I am sure that many of my professors are proud of me as well, but it gets harder and harder to explain that I’m not working on anything because I’m too busy or that I don’t know if I have it in me anymore to direct. I’m tired, and enjoying my mid-twenties is very high on my list of priorities. Balancing my potential, my expectations of myself, the expectations of others, the things I want to do, and my obligations is not easy. My obligations are winning by far.

I want to foster an artistic identity in the Boston arts community. But instead I am just the girl who is working about 50 percent of the events you attend in a given month.

I wouldn’t make it through without my mom and my friends. I have the kind of mom who thinks that I’m doing better because I am persevering in the face of hardship, and the kind of friends that buy me breakfast when I overdraft. These are the people who applaud finding both a dress and a skirt for $1 each, who think I’m funny instead of bitter, and who read my blog and tell me it’s good because it’s true.

I do not own anything fancy, I can never make it home for a visit, and sometimes life puts me in a really bad mood, but I have somehow found (or been born to) people that love me anyway.

I actually feel pretty blessed these days. I have been revealing a lot about myself and my situation on this blog. I am proud of what I have written, and I am amazed that people are not only reading, but responding. I am now more sure than ever that hard times are what makes good times worth having.

I have to believe that I am responsible for my own situation. Otherwise I would have no power or desire to change it.

Inherently, the answer to the question is: both. But nothing is going to change for me if I blame my situation on factors over which I have no control.

On November 6th, I voted for a man who I think cares about people like me and my family. But other than that, I have no hand in the economy or any factor that may have dealt my generation such a poor hand.

It’s a question like this — and the almost constant encouragement to find something more steady — that make me realize that I create my own circumstance.

I’m sorry to be brief, but the government doesn’t get me to work nor budget my money. So I would be hard pressed to give them credit for my successes or blame them for my hardships.

Quite frankly, my parents never told me how all-consuming student loan debt could be. And I’m sure that before they had two kids to put through college, they didn’t really know. They are accustomed to living with debt and going without when need be, as I’m sure I will be when I have a family and a home of my own.

The difference between my parents and me is that I don’t have to wait for kids and cars to be living from paycheck to paycheck with thousands of dollars hanging over my head. To my mother’s credit, she did try to warn me. She always told me that I should just choose what I want; she and my dad would find a way to pay for it. At that time I didn’t think “find a way” would be such an operative phrase and that when she said “me and dad” she meant all of us.

This is the most difficult question yet for me because the subject matter inherently brings up all kinds of negative emotions. I am angry and confused, and sometimes completely overwhelmed. When I got out of college and into repayment, I didn’t know which of my five loans were private or which had been sold to a different servicer. Nor did I know if the amount of my payments was in any way negotiable or normal. To this day I am not as informed about my own debt as I know I should be, and I am just too scared to really find out what I am up against. What if it is too much?

When I say that student loan debt is consuming, I don’t just mean it ties all of my money up in principle and interest payments, I mean that loans are the measurement on which I gauge family wealth and the lens through which I perceive someone’s financial hardship. I sometimes feel bad even thinking it, but it is hard for me to commiserate with another’s financial situation if they do not have student loan debt.

Maybe I just don’t know enough about how things can be hard, but I do know that I won’t be able to have a car, that I am nowhere near having my own apartment, and during the summer when I have just one job instead of three, I won’t even be able to keep current on my payments. To me, this is as bad as it could be for a gainfully employed person in my age bracket. I did what people always told me I should — I went to a good college, did well, and got a job. I am angry that what I have to show for it is debt, and that it’s not like this for everyone.

In comparison, credit card debt has little to no bearing on my financial situation or outlook on my situation versus someone else’s. Those payments are manageable.

I know that I have credit because I chose to have a credit card, and my relationship with Capital One is not nearly as wrought with animosity as my relationship with Sallie Mae. However, it is exceedingly annoying to have only paid off 7 percent of a credit card balance, which I reached buying a laptop that I accidentally knocked over when trying to reach something high up. Even though I am not far along in the process, I am optimistic about paying off my balance; I take any opportunity to make a payment over the minimum due.

Debt is hard for me to think about and discuss.

When things are hard I have always fallen back on comforting myself, and others, with the assurance that these things don’t last forever. I have always been one to just put my head down and trudge along until I reach the finish line. But in this case, I am genuinely worried that my debt and the hardship I feel because of it will last forever and that, no matter how many payments I make on time, there will always be one more lined up directly behind it.

If President Clinton has taught me anything, it’s that good things are measured with arithmetic. I will be paying off my student loans for roughly the rest of my life, so I figure that if I get a job with a 401(k) I can retire on, then college was a good investment. If the number of years of my life, minus the amount of time it takes to pay off my loans equals anything, then, technically, I made a good investment.

Even as I type this, I feel cynical saying that absolutely anything above breaking even is a good outcome, but seeing as I currently have a mound of debt but no 401(k), it does seem realistic. I can’t even be sure that I got my full money’s worth while in college: I got two degrees but only one diploma, almost no financial aid, and, as we all now know, I do not spell any better than I did when I was in fifth grade.

Even to me, quantifying the value of my college experience by whether or not I pay it off and still get to retire seems unreasonably biased. I may be overly skeptical because I am spending the next few weeks reflecting on and writing about a time that is unconventionally tough on people just like me.

But I never want to come off as thinking college is useless, or had no hand in the successes I do have in my life. I know that during those four years, I grew more both intellectually and personally than I could have anywhere else. I lived in the nicest dorm room I have ever heard of, made the friend I still call my best, worked on projects I still claim on my resume, and found the field I hope to work in for the rest of my life.

This is a question I had never thought I would have to ask myself. Even having done so much I am proud of, it is hard to look back fondly when I am so overwhelmed by student loan debt that I find it hard to spend time with friends because it means spending money, and I get more collection calls than personal ones.

There have to be colleges out there that would have cost me less money, not to mention schools with a student body with whom I would have had more in common. But, on the other hand, had I not gone to Emerson, I might have ended up on a track that did not lead me down the road into the Boston theatre community, which has embraced me and does share a lot of my values.

I have heard a lot of “hang in there” since my first blog post went up.

I hear it from strangers and people I very much respect, and I know it’s about valuing the arts and my role in them so that others will too. I wish that were my issue. I am dedicated to doing what I am doing; the pressure I feel is from living like I am young and feeding myself like I am still growing, while trying to make payments to Sallie Mae that are half the size of my rent.

I am so confused. I know that college is responsible for both my income and my debt. All I can say right now is that I do think that college was worth the money that it is currently costing me, but I really will not know until I pay off my loans and take a look around.

I am very grateful to say that I do not feel underemployed. My job is full-time, with benefits, and the opportunity to move up. Over-qualification is not the struggle in my work life, but under-compensation is.

As if that wasn’t enough, I have two other jobs on top of the first, yet persistently find myself without. I work
too much to be underemployed, and way too much to be so poor. While, yes, I feel challenged at work and while I refuse to feel anything other than appreciative to just have a job, having to work three jobs and six days a week, just to almost make by, makes it hard to think I am in the right place.

When I try to remember what I would have thought myself to be doing after college, when this was only a mystical future time, I can’t remember what I wanted to be. But I feel good about guessing: living in an apartment, with a good job, but I would have thought then that I’d have a boyfriend by now.

Two out of three is respectable for a child.

What I didn’t see coming was the job paying for the apartment — and almost nothing else. I don’t have three jobs (that I am proud to work) because I am saving money or trying to finance a trip. I usher and sell half-price tickets because that buys me food and (mostly) pays my student loans.

At Emerson College, I got a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies with concentrations in Dramaturgy and Directing, and a B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. I started college as a Writing major and was introduced to theatre criticism in a Theatre Appreciation class the college had assigned to my schedule. During college, I got the chance to be a dramaturg, director, actor, producer, board member, RA, and women’s basketball team manager (some of those things are still on my resume). I know more people in the Boston theatre community because I met them during college — in fact, I still work at Emerson.

But it would be exceedingly naïve of me to think that not having gone to college would disqualify me from having any of my current positions. I learned a lot during college and I think I made choices that helped build the foundation for my professional development, but having those experiences and getting these jobs are not mutually inclusive events.

I am not always happy with where I am. There could always be more money, or more free time, or more responsibility, but I am happy that I worked for everything that I have, doing something I love. I do struggle when I am encouraged to find something — anything — that will pay me more, weighing the lifestyle that working in a bank could provide me against the benefits of working in theatre.

What keeps me going is knowing that every time things are tough and I still make it through, I am one step closer to doing what I want and also actually being able to live that way.

I graduated with two degrees and got a full-time job right out of college, but I can barely pay my bills because my student loan payments are outrageous.

No matter how hard I work, I’ll never be able to get out from under student loan debt. I sure have tried.