My economic situation has had an interesting effect on my relationship with those around me.

My parents had to support me, emotionally and financially, during my unemployment, and they are certainly the people I depended on the most and the relationship that had to adjust the most to my situation.

I’ve talked often here about what my parents did for me and how much I appreciated it. The moving-home situation could have been a lot worse and my parents were great about it and the strain was much less than I expected, considering the last time I lived with them full time was when I was in high school.

I think what helped a lot was that I wasn’t just sitting around moping. I’m not built for more than one or two moping days in a row, if that. I have to be moving and doing at all times. Most of my moping was when I was in bed at night worrying. During the day, I was working on this or that project, or at this or that part-time job. I was writing cover letters and searching the job listings.

I tried to be as little a burden as possible and my parents were really flexible.

Other than food and living rent free, I was able, through unemployment benefits and the income from my part-time jobs, to fund the rest of my life decently well. My student loans were on deferment, which was a huge help, and the rest of my bills (car payment, etc.) were covered by the money coming in. I think that helped a lot to keep strain and stress from affecting me and my parents.

Money stress can sour a relationship, no matter the type, pretty quickly.

My friends have likewise been great. Luckily — or unluckily, depending on how you look at it — we’re all in similar financial situations, so it’s not as though I have to decline invitations left and right to expensive nights out. At other times, I’ve had friends be great and buy my drinks for a night so I can come out and not worry about how I’m going to pay for it.

I think everyone is really understanding of each other’s financial constraints and now it’s my turn to be understanding, since, while by no means financially well-off, I do have an income. Now I can buy a round, just because. Now I can budget in a weekend trip for Homecoming. But I still have to be careful. My brother just got married and we stayed at a casino. I did not gamble. My friends want to take a trip in March to D.C. for a basketball game and to visit friends. I have to really think about it and decide if I can afford the trip.

But I wouldn’t say that my situation strains my relationships with my friends because we’re all there in the same place. We don’t talk about how hard it is. We don’t have to. We all know.

Factors that have contributed to my success:

• Hard work
• Good decisions
• Perseverance
• Luck
• Circumstance

Factors that have hindered my success:

• Bad luck
• Circumstance

I wanted to start with a list of factors before I delved into the substance of this question. As I’ve stated before, I don’t think that I’m necessarily in a bad situation now, although at times it can feel overwhelming. But I do think that I have been hindered by the economic state of the country and the timing of my graduation.

If I was five years older, I would have graduated into an economic boom and would likely be in a much better position at two-years post-graduation than I am today at the same time out.

There’s this accusation that my generation is “entitled” and/or “lazy.” Disparaging the younger generation is a tired line. Dismissing an entire generation as being lazy isn’t fair and I think it’s detrimental to our success as a nation to ignore the problems that are being faced by the younger people in this country.

WBUR is calling us “Generation Stuck,” but I’ve also heard us called — on a global level — a “Lost Generation.” The idea is that our entire generation may miss out on the job market because by the time the market recovers, it’s going to higher the younger generation and rehire those with years of experience, leaving out our middle generation that got stopped before we could even get started.

My biggest fear when I was unemployed was that I would miss out entirely on the chance to have a career. The longer you are unemployed, you are not only missing out on time you could be gaining experience, but you are also becoming less and less employable even at your experience level. I was worried that by the time the economy picked up, I would be losing out on jobs not to the more experienced, but to the more recent graduates. So, instead of calling those in their teens and twenties entitled, understand exactly what we’re going through.

In addition to my own hard work, good decision making, and perseverance, I’ve also achieved a lot in my life as the result of luck and circumstance. I was born into a good family that gave me a leg up because I lived in a good school district. My family supported me and allowed me to get a great education, which helped me along the road to a good college and law school. Of course, without my drive and hard work, that would have meant nothing, but there’s no question that being born into the right family, in the right area, counts for a lot. My mom used to say when I was growing up that we are so lucky to be born in the United States and in Massachusetts because life can be so much harder elsewhere.

I’ve been working since I got a paper route when I was twelve years old. You don’t become a lawyer out of a sense of entitlement. It takes work and drive. You don’t rise out of unemployment during one of the worst legal job markets ever by laying around waiting for someone to give you a hand-out. It takes perseverance and hard work.

And you know what? If you are unemployed, it’s not because you are lazy either. It is HARD out there. Success isn’t guaranteed and I’ve yet to meet anyone in my age bracket that thinks should be. My generation was raised with lofty expectations, but I think we understand that those expectations can only be met if you work for them.

I was raised being told I was smart and could do whatever I wanted, but I always understood that that promise came with the caveat that I could do whatever I wanted so long as I worked hard and put in the time to make that come true. I think I have worked hard and I think I deserve credit for my success. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the other factors that contributed to my position, both in positive and negative ways.

Just as circumstance gave me the great fortune of growing up on the North Shore in Massachusetts, which gave me great opportunity and a head start, it also gave me 2011-2012, which was one of the hardest years of my life.

So the big question is: What gets the most credit for my success? Outside forces like luck and circumstance or my own free will? I don’t think it’s possible to separate the two and give one more credit than the other. I wouldn’t be where I am without both. In fact, my will and drive and hard work are the result of genetics and personality, things that are themselves the result of outside forces.

If I wasn’t a hard worker, I might never have gone to the schools I did and graduated in the midst of a recession. If the recession hadn’t forced me to take a one-year position and then be unemployed, I wouldn’t have looked to different areas of law and I wouldn’t be working where I am now or going wherever my career is taking me.

So I won’t assign a percentage to either side of the dime. At different points in your life, things may seem more out of your control than at others. In April, things seemed like they were spiraling and I was merely along for the downward slide. Since May, however, things have seen much more in control and I think — I hope — life is really about finding a balance between the two.

Ah, the summer of 2007. I had just graduated college with a measly $16,000 in student loans; life was carefree. Between scholarships and the boom years for my dad’s career, college was mostly paid for. With my degree, I could have gotten a job doing something that paid moderately well and be on my way to debt-free life (Keep in mind, this is in my ideal world, when I sit at home staring at my actual student-loan debt and imagining “what if?”).

Then, in the fall, I entered law school. Keep in mind, I spent most of the previous year doing things to get into law school, like take the LSAT and apply for school and financial aid, so this isn’t a surprise, but work with me here.

Northeastern University School of Law gave me an $8,000 annual merit scholarship. Beyond that, every cent of the roughly $40,000-a-year tuition was funded by federal student loans. I was no longer financially dependent on my parents, but I was now dependent and buying my groceries and movie tickets with government money.

That’s not to say I didn’t work — I did. I had a work study that amounted to about $1,000 a semester and I had paid internships during my co-op quarters. But that didn’t amount to much. And, as the first year of law school wound down, the recession hit. When the recession hit, my father’s job, which once allowed me to study abroad for a semester with little budgetary constraints, now put my parents in the position where they had to borrow money from my student loans to pay for my younger brother’s college tuition. Eventually, they did pay me back, but my brother ended up having to take private loans to pay for his last two years.

I lived off those loans. I used some of them to put a down payment on my car (bought used). I enjoyed my time in law school. I graduated. I paid for a bar review course with my loans; paid the fee to take the bar exam with the loans. And now I have to pay them back.

$192,836.87

That’s what the Department of Education’s website says I owe. And it grows. My monthly interest is more than $900, but I only pay $315.56 a month because I don’t make enough money to pay any more.

I’m not asking for sympathy. I knew what I was doing when I signed those promissory notes and enrolled in law school. I absolutely thought that the other side of law school would bring a bigger payday than I’ve encountered, but sometimes life does that. I’m on income-based repayment, so if all remains the same, in 25 years, my loans will be forgiven — just in time for me to take out loans for my own kids to go to school, if I have them.

But I hope the system doesn’t stay the same. It’s corrupt and broken. When the federal government guarantees limitless student loans, colleges and universities are free to raise tuition astronomically and nobody blinks.

There’s no way the $150,000+ that I gave to Northeastern University School of Law went only to costs. I think colleges need to be held to a similar rule as health insurance companies under the ACA – 80 percent (or some other number) of tuition should be required to go to services that directly benefit the students.

You can use my tuition to pay the salary of my professor or bring an interesting speaker to campus but not to renovate the chancellor’s house. Don’t hit that 80 percent? Give me a refund. There are many other reforms needed, but I think a good first step is to find out where that tuition money is going.

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” – Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1916-1939).

Transparency is key. Tell me where my money is going. What’s the point of a billion-dollar endowment if it just sits in a bank account? I think frustration would be less if we could at least see where the money is going. Beyond that, however, there needs to be more accountability. New buildings are fantastic, but when you multiply $40,000 by eleven thousand undergrads, not all of that money is going toward construction and salaries.

Of course, student loans aren’t my only debt, but my credit-card debt is pretty negligible compared to the giant elephant in the room. I bought a used car in 2010 after graduating law school (I was leaving Boston and needed transportation); I have credit cards (I bought textbooks, a mattress, and a couch and, while I’ve cut it in half from its highest point, that’s still hovering at around $1,000).

Honestly, I’m so exhausted by thinking about my financial situation, I can’t even really get worked up about it anymore. Almost my entire generation is in the same situation, so no one is going to get upset for me. It’s just a fact of life for my peers and me. I have student loans. I will be paying them for at least the next twenty-five years, unless I win the lottery – which I don’t play – or meet a rich benefactor.

I think the biggest anxiety that I have about my financial situation is the unknown.

What if I suddenly need a large sum of money? The day to day is basically covered, though finances are tight. I can afford to be tight and go visit friends at Syracuse’s homecoming this year, but what if my car needs work? It’s at almost 60,000 miles, that could happen! I can’t afford extensive work. I have a very bare-bones health insurance plan; what if I get hurt or sick?

That’s what keeps me up at night.

My parents could probably help, maybe my brothers if I was really in a pinch. But I’m a grown up. I don’t want to need help to pay my own bills. For now, I have to be careful, save what I can (while still having a life – I won’t stay in every weekend like a hermit because something might happen), do my best to be happy with what I have, and work hard to make sure that I’m better off five years from now — whatever that means.

There has been a lot of debate since the recession hit and with the rising controversy over student loan debt about what is the exact value of a college education and the question “is it worth it?”

Let me begin by saying, I think the criticism is one hundred percent valid. College tuition has risen dramatically without check, and I think the entire industry needs an overhaul. The student loan business (which has been reformed to a degree) has made it too easy for people to get bogged down in loans they can’t hope to pay back and has allowed colleges and universities to raise tuition without the normal market check that most industries are subject to — that at some point the product is too expensive and people stop buying, which causes the price to go back down.

With the abundance and ease that one can get a student loan, there’s almost never a point where a prospective student says “enough.” To me, the question wasn’t, “Is this too much?” The question was, “What’s another ten grand when I already owe so much?”

College is not for everyone and there are plenty of meaningful and important careers that do not require a college degree. Maybe our society does value a college education too much, to the detriment of those other careers. The way society looks at a college degree may lead people who wouldn’t normally want to go to
college to take out loans they will never be able to pay back for a degree they will never use.

We’ve all met those “undeclared” undergraduates who never quite find something that fits. Heck, I went to law school with those people, who were there because it was something to do while they figured out what they really wanted to do. Unfortunately, they rack up major student loans while in the process of finding themselves.

I think we should put more value on those other paths.

Parents shouldn’t pressure their kids to make a decision; maybe let them explore more before submitting themselves to the never-ending pressure that is six-figure student loan debt.

Now, for me. I went to college and then got my graduate degree.

Was it worth it for me? I’m going to err on the side of yes, it was. Yes, I racked up enormous debt, the vast majority of which came from law school, which I “paid” for myself. And yes, I was unemployed for a while and I’m now making less than what I expected when I initially matriculated.

But, despite it all, college and law school was not just a solution to ennui or the result of a lack of direction. College was something I had looked forward to since I was a little girl and law school was not a decision made lightly but a decision made because of a sincere desire to be an attorney. While the path might have been bumpier than I was expecting, I am a fully employed attorney at this present moment, so it wasn’t for naught.

I loved college and it was absolutely the right choice for me. Going to college, more specifically Syracuse University (go Orange!), was the best decision I’ve ever made in my life and I would do it again in a second. I got an amazing education and made lifelong friends. To me, college was more than just classes; it was being on my own, learning to get along with people who grew up differently, being introduced to different cultures, traveling the world. I became an adult in college; I became me in college. I BLEED orange. The Syracuse University community was so much more than just a place I got my degree. I love my school.

As for academics at Syracuse, I was able to get a well-rounded education. I loved my majors and I think they set me up well for getting into law school. Beyond my majors — Broadcast Journalism and American Studies — I was able to dabble in different areas as well, including a Constitutional Law class that was, ultimately, my first introduction to what a law class would be like and, was the first sign that I really liked studying the law.

If I could go back, I don’t think I would change anything about my college experience (except for maybe take that History of Primetime Television 1960-Present class. That sounded amazing).

Now, law school, that’s where I got my debt. Was law school worth it? That gets a yes and a no.

As I mentioned earlier, tuition for universities and law schools has risen dramatically and the return on the investment has dropped considerably since the recession, because, as tuition has kept rising, average income and rate of employment has fallen precipitously. I put my self into major student loan debt for, as it turns out, only a marginal increase in salary compared to if I had pursued a career in broadcasting (assuming I was employed).

At the same time, I would be lying if I said I regretted going to law school. I realized when I was in college that journalism was not my path and I was drawn to law school. I loved my classes and I’m proud of my degree and the work I put into it and into passing the bar. I really love the work I’m doing as an attorney and, as much as I loved being a reporter in Syracuse, I don’t think I would be as satisfied with my work if I was in broadcasting.

At the end of the day, it’s more important to me that I’m happy with my work and I’m satisfied with my life. I might have some major student loans but I can manage the payments (thank you, IBR repayment) and I have faith that things will only get better. I will get raises, I will continue to pay my bill, and maybe even save some.

Of course, if I was contemplating this question five months ago, when I was sure I would never get a job as an attorney, I might have a different view. I thought about it often. Should I get my teaching degree? Get a PhD? Give up and live with my parents forever? Fake my death to escape my loans and start over on a remote island?

But, at my core, I’m a positive person and I can’t help but feel like things have to work out. I’ve worked too hard to be a failure. I can’t be bogged down in debt the rest of my life, right? God, I hope not.

Asking me if I’m overqualified for my job seems like a loaded question. I think my answer is both a yes and a no. Let me explain. Am I overqualified for my job? No.

However, I probably should have been at this place two years ago.

Let’s rewind a bit. What happened two years ago? I graduated from law school, and into one of the worst legal job markets ever. That study is for the class of 2011, but my class of 2010 wasn’t much better off.

To make my situation a bit more complicated, while I lucked out and found a job, it was a one-year position that was more academic than practical, so I was launched into that terrible job market in 2011 without much of an advantage over those new grads.

So that’s how I found myself, in the fall of 2011, moving back home to my parents, unemployed.

Now fastforwarding nine months, I began my current position at a small firm as an entry-level associate, nearly two years into my legal career.

Am I overqualified for my job? No, but at this point in the timeline of my career, I should be overqualified. That being said, I really do like my job and I’m working a lot and getting into court and doing things that second- or third-year associates at big firms still aren’t doing.

So while I should probably also be making more money than I am — thanks, recession! — and I should probably be further along in seniority, I ended up in a good place and I’m getting great experience.

I honestly am pretty grateful for where I’m at professionally. There are a lot of people who I graduated law school with struggling worse than I am and who still aren’t fully employed as attorneys. I have one former classmate trying to start her own firm while working full time at a car dealership, another teaching LSAT prep courses, and many others temping or just out of the legal field altogether.

During those nine months I was unemployed, there were times I regretted going to law school and I considered what I’d be doing if I hadn’t. I certainly wouldn’t be laying awake at night wondering how I was going to pay back my six-figure student loan bill I got from going to law school.

But then again, I went to law school for a reason.

My undergraduate degree is in Broadcast Journalism and American Studies. Can I imagine myself out there being a TV reporter like some of my Syracuse classmates? At some point between my sophomore and junior years at Syracuse, I stopped picturing myself as a reporter and started thinking of myself as a lawyer. A few months of unemployment didn’t change that. So, no matter how many rejection letters I got, and still get — I’ve been at my job nearly four months and every once in while a rejection letter trickles in — I kept sending more resumes and eventually one stuck and now, here I am, a fully employed attorney.

A lot happened in those nine months. I worked several part-time jobs, but, despite that, I had never felt more useless in my life. I felt like everyone could tell that I was unemployed.

I even waited until 3 PM to go to the gym or run errands so maybe the people who would see me out, even strangers, would think I was a teacher and not a “loser.”

My family, and my parents specifically, were really supportive and never once spoke down to me or thought less of me for the position I was in. I think the most important thing I heard during one of my “I’m a loser” moments was when my dad told me, “You’re the only one who thinks that.” It can be so demoralizing to be unemployed and it was important to be told by my dad that he and the rest of my family knew that I was trying and knew that it was only temporary, not just because I didn’t want them to think less of me, but I think I needed to be told that I shouldn’t think less of me either.

So, I think I’ve successfully demonstrated how loaded a question it is to ask if I’m overqualified for my job. I also think I’ve demonstrated this weird attitude my generation has toward employment.

I’ve spoken to a number of my fellow law graduates and peers and almost universally it seems that we are oddly grateful to work below our paygrade or to work outside our desired field because at least we’re working. Granted, that’s a broad generalization and I can already think of one friend who is the opposite of that statement entirely, but for those of us who graduated into the recession and dealt with unemployment of any length, to be working at all can seem to be a victory in itself.

I’ve been working for several months now and I’ve moved to Boston. Things are looking up.

I’m a 27-year-old attorney who recently emerged from nearly nine months of unemployment.

I am saddled in nearly $200,000 in student loans, not to mention a couple thousand in credit card debt, largely due to furniture purchases made when I first went out “on my own.”

As a result of my unemployment, I made the move back to living on the North Shore with my parents, though now that I am back to work I have recently moved to Jamaica Plain, into an apartment with two — TWO — roommates.

I never thought this would be where I am in my life. I can’t afford to live on my own and I don’t make enough money to even pay half of my monthly student loan interest, let alone make a payment that will eventually lead to me paying them off.

Growing up — and as recently as 2007 when I entered law school, pre-recession — I thought by age 27 that I would be making close to six figures, if not well into the six figures. I’m not even close, even though I’m working my butt off. I thought I’d own a home and now I don’t know if I will ever be in a position to buy a new car (as opposed to used), let alone a house. The idea of having children, once a must, now seems so financially unfeasible that it wouldn’t be fair to have them.

I graduated law school at what seemed to be the WORST time and it turns out it’s only getting worse.